Johnny Knoxville Opens Up About Life As A Dad & Staging Intervention For Steve-O

While Johnny Knoxville may enjoy being a “Jackass” on screen, the former MTV star opened up regarding a more serious issue – helping his co-star, Steve-O, during a dark time of drug addiction and thoughts of suicide.

“We’d all had our eye on Steve-O because he’d gotten to a really bad point in doing all kinds of crazy drugs,” Johnny told Access Hollywood Live’s Billy Bush and Kit Hoover on Wednesday, of the March 2008 intervention. “But [when Steve-O’s] e-mails kind of hinted at [suicide]… I got 10 of our closest friends — big guys– and went to his house and said, ‘Steve-O, you know, we’re here to take you in to the rehab, or actually 5150 [medical hold],’ and he goes, ‘No dude, I ain’t going.’

“I said, ‘Steve-O, if you don’t go I’ve instructed the guys to knock you out and then we’ll take you.’ He’s like, ‘OK dude, I’ll go,’” Johnny laughed.

“But he went, and to his credit, man, he just stuck with it, and he’s been sober two-and-a-half years,” the prankster proudly told Billy and Kit.

Johnny’s latest “Jackass” installment, “Jackass 3D,” took the box office by storm last weekend, crushing the competition with an amazing $50 million opening — the biggest October opening of all time — and leaving the star dumbfounded in the process.

“It was a shock,” he told Billy and Kit, of his latest endeavor’s successful debut. “I was hoping for $30 million, man!”

While Johnny and the boys may pull off ridiculous stunts in hopes of making audiences laugh, the man at the helm said he’s “the disciplinarian” when it comes to his two children – something he learned from his surprisingly straight-laced mom.

”[My mom] still thinks I’m 6 years old,” Johnny told Billy and Kit. “We screened [‘Jackass 3D’] in Knoxville and she sat right next to me. I think I took a worse beating sitting next to my mother watching the film than I did in the movie, because every time a stunt would come on that I was in she’d start going, ‘Why did you — what are you doing? You gotta stop!’”

As for Johnny’s two children, daughter Madison, 14, and nearly 1-year-old son Rocco, the two do not have their father’s blessing to continue in the “Jackass” tradition.

“Pranks are fine, no stunts,” he told Billy and Kit, “I don’t want Rocco or Madison doing any stunts.”