Thank You Gerry

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And aren't we glad he aimed for those stars! Feel free to comment below on just why YOU Gerry Butler. Share what your favorite GB movie is or your favorite interview. Have you ever met him in person? How were you introduced to Gerry Land? Gush... cry... swoon to your merry heart's content.

As much of an incurable picture freak as I am I’ve decided to request that there be no further pictures in our posts here, as what I have in mind for this site is a place where Gerry fans around the globe can say their "Thank You's" to him. I'd like this page to be more of a gift FOR HIM rather than another board with drool worthy pictures for us. (Besides, would you want to receive Thank You letters with personal pics OF YOURSELF? Lol!) I hope you understand my reasoning, but please feel free to post pics on my other MySpace Page. And please don't feel like you have to thank me for the add on this page either. I'm just thrilled each time someone posts a "Thank You" to Gerry. It's why I created the page in the first place.

Thank You to those who have contributed so far. If Gerry ever reads our replies, I'm sure he'll be delighted. We all know how much he loves his fans.

"When the heart is full the tongue will speak."

~ Scottish Proverb

Music:

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"So, if you were to compare this to “The Phantom of the Opera,” where I felt like I spent four or five months listening to the saddest notes in my soul and crying all the time, no, 300 has not been like that."

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"...But especially I always feel about loving something so much, that fear that we all have of maybe never being able to be loved back. We all kind of hope and expect that as our right as humans to have that, to have companionship. And suddenly when you climb into somebody’s head you can’t even have that. It kind of rips you apart."

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"Maybe it was too much, but it was my instinctive feeling when I first read it, I would think, "This is so sad." Joel would say, "But this is so sexy." Somewhere along the way, we managed to get them both in there. That's one of the most exciting things. If you can do "Point of No Return" which is so heartbreaking and so f---in' sexy and sensual and lusty and yet tragic and yet when you can feel both those things at the same time, they are almost like warring emotions. In the finale, when I looked into the eyes of Patrick Wilson, who is such an exceptional and truthful actor, I could see this man dying in front of me with nothing, it broke my heart, and yet, I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill someone (He raised his voice), but to be breaking your heart about it at the same time, that's when my fate playing these villainous characters is so fascinating."

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"And from the second I started, it just all came alive and I felt the electricity running through me, you know? And every take we did… There were so many moments in that movie where I just thought - the power and attachment and feeling that I had while I was performing felt so immense."

~*~

Do you think he regretted letting Christine go?

”Ah, it’s heartbreaking! It’s one of the most heartbreaking moments in the history of movies or the stage. I think yes, he may have regretted his decision at times. But he had to do it. And it’s also such a beautiful, tender moment when he understands that he is doomed to be alone and never have the human love, connection or sexual relationship that he wants. But I’m sure if the Phantom had stayed with Christine the story would never been anywhere near as popular.”

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Thanks for segueing into some sex questions. The Phantom had a kinky side and went for younger girls. How much of Gerard Butler was in that portrayal and how much was acting?

“Let me say that I think Christine had had everyone in that opera house! (laughter) She just hid it well. She was a big floozy, and that’s why the Phantom wanted her.”

~*~

I think if you look carefully when Gerry crushes the rose his eyes are absolutely full of tears. It was an immensely emotional day of filming. It was a incredibly hard scene for him, because he was on his own on the rooftop and had to sustain the interest of the camera for a very long time and he did genuinely cry in those scenes and those of us watching on set were very moved that day.

~*~

In fact, Butler identified with the sadness of the Phantom, his isolation and loneliness. ''When I read the script, I kept wiping tears from my neck. But I didn't know if I could do the singing. I started training even before I had the role. I sang so much during the filming of 'Dear Frankie,' my co-stars kept telling me to shut up.''

After passing his audition with the score's composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Butler won the part. This led to talk that he may be cast as James Bond. ''I think they're also considering Miss Piggy,'' he said, about to leave for yet another screening of ''Phantom.'' ''When CNN said on the air that there were rumors that I had been cast as Bond, I was back in London. My washing machine was broken, and the central heating wouldn't turn on, and the house was freezing. There I was, the 'next big thing' again, and the contrast seemed greater than usual. On the one hand, I was Bond. On the other, my life was a mess.'' As he spoke, his driver appeared with a pretty woman who worked for the limo company. ''Hel-lo,'' Butler said, interrupting himself. ''Can I sit next to you on the ride over?'' Pleased, she smiled shyly and made a call to her dispatcher. ''I think I'm getting my energy back,'' he said, heading toward the back door of the hotel. ''It's time to take a ride. You never know where you will end up.''

~*~

"Also, Joel Schumacher and I were friends," Butler continues, "and if there’s one thing about Joel, it’s that he’s a genius for casting. I thought, ‘There must be something going on here. He must have some reason for coming to me,’ and then when I read it I understood. Then I talked with him, and when he explained wanting to bring the whole age down, I could see the genius of that. It’s all the more heartbreaking for [this] Phantom because he’s a man in the prime of his life. Therefore, he’s denied sexually, intimately. It’s more heartbreaking when you know he’s already had his story, so he’s already been through a lot of that pain, but here he still has so much to offer, but this love is not for him. That killed me in every way."

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"All the Phantom wants in some ways is to be accepted as everybody else, " says Butler. “He has so much to offer the world in his art and his music and his passion and his creativity. And nobody wants to see it. They'd rather he was just out of the way because he doesn't fit in." Butler doesn't deny the phantom's dark side. "He's quite egocentric, quite full of himself. He's proud and in some ways selfish and dogmatic. But then I think, too f***ing right. Because he's been shown nothing but hatred. The only way he can get anything in life is to spit back some venom."

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“I’ve been through very dark periods,” says Butler, explaining depression has long plagued his father’s side of the family. “I had such a fear of expressing myself. There was such a turmoil and a war going on within myself. And I think that’s something that would certainly be expressed in the Phantom—so desperately wanting to have somebody there for him; that one companion to be able to explore and be with.”

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"I don't think I'll ever have another experience like it," he says of the Joel Schumacher-directed "Phantom," which finds him as the new Renee Zellweger-an untrained singer at the center of a big screen musical. "it was beautiful, inspiring, painful and the hardest thing I ever did."

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"He is a tortured, selfish character, but he is also a tragic, obsessed one. "He is like so many of us - abandoned, unloved, ugly and imperfect. And he is the sort of man who breaks my heart." The Phantom, says the 34-year-old Butler, may not be the most endearing of men, but he is fiercely protective of him: "If you had been cast aside by the world, without love, you'd feel bitter, too."

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"I listened to the soundtrack as I read the script. And by the end of it I was soaked and I was wiping tears from my neck and I thought ‘oh my god I so know this guy."

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“What appealed to me was the human side of the phantom. That's what grabbed me when I read Joel's interpretation. I played the music from the stage show, lit my candles, read the script, and by the end of it, I was the Phantom. I was so sold on him and especially his pain."

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Instead of a 25-instrument pit orchestra, there's a full symphony with 105 players and a 90-voice choir. "Every time I watch it I'm in tears, " Butler says. "Shaking, you know? It takes me back to that head space, that emotion."With his engaging grey/green eyes and sardonic manner, it's easy to appreciate why Entertainment Weekly has been tipping the 33-year-old actor to take over from Pierce Brosnan as the next James Bond. Butler originally trained as a lawyer. He worked in one of the top law firms, which handled the queen's estate in Scotland."It was a very dark period of my life, " he says. "I spent every day pretending to be a fine, upstanding, rational man in a suit whereas actually I felt crippled and unhappy and desperate. It was a big deal in my family that I was going to be a lawyer. No one had ever done anything like that before.But I hated what I was doing. It was eating me up."That's what I think the Phantom is all about. There are two things going on with him. There's his way of presenting himself, which is just perfect . . . the beautifully designed mask, the way he wears his clothing . . . there's an elegance and a power to it.But inside that's not what's going on. There's so much pain and longing and frustration. He can't show that to Christine, because that's not attractive. It would be different if she was an older woman. But she's a child. She needs a father. She needs a guide. And she's drawn to that."

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“I related with the character, with his passion, his artistic sensibility and the suffering and alienation that have accompanied him all his life. The Phantom is a person with extraordinary talents, with an almost magical strength and charisma, but at the same time he has the dark consequences of an abandoned child. I also went through some dark times in my life, that’s way I know how the Phantom feels”. The character, he explains, represents all of us because “as you get older and your past gets heavier, there are things that you don’t want to carry with you any more, things about yourself that you don’t want to reveal because you fear that the others will judge you as being ugly and disgusting. I believe that the Phantom has such a strong impact among the public because people can relate with his suffering.”

~*~

It was a strange experience for me because for Tomb Raider and for Timeline – the Dick Donner movie that I just did – I really came in from the outside. I was always the last guy to be screen tested, you know. And I felt like the underdog. And I function very well when I'm the underdog. Whereas with The Phantom, I had an initial meeting with Joel where he said, "I just hope you can sing. I'd love you to be the phantom. I think you're perfect for this." And he says, "Now Gerry, I'm not even looking at anybody else."

~*~

“But I don't regret it. Because of my drinking problem, I had to change my career and was able to become an actor. If it wasn't for that, I may still be a lawyer. I was able to apply my experience of the loneliness and pain I felt when I was drinking in developing the character for the roles in POTO and DF. With what stayed with me and the scars from those experiences, I was able to deeply identify with their problem-ridden lives.”

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"The Phantom descends into madness, heartache, loss and tragedy. Towards the end, when you see my deformity, I was getting up at 3.30 in the morning and going in for five or six hours of prosthetics. Then I was crying my eyes out and screaming and shouting, and finally getting to bed at ten at night so wound up that I couldn’t sleep." And the result? "I haven’t seen the whole thing, but I know I did the best I could. I’m more excited about this than any movie I’ve ever done. I think everybody involved is hugely, quietly confident. I saw a ten-minute preview and it makes my spine tingle, and I can’t stop myself from crying."

Movies:

What kind of movie was it?

“It (Krull) was like the early 80's version of 'The Lord Of The Rings.’ I dreamed that I lived in the world full of monsters, witches, and princes myself. I even dreamt that I was holding hands with a princess. It was a very vivid dream!”

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Sounds like you really got into your dream. LOL

“When I woke up, I was sure about two things. One was that I was really in love with the princess. LOL The other thing was that I really wanted to be an actor. Though I thought it was impossible, my feeling got stronger and stronger, and I finally couldn't hold it inside myself and told my mother, ‘I want to be an actor.’ She said, ‘Oh, that's good.’ Her response was so abrupt and brief, that I started crying saying, ‘No, no, no, I really WANT to be an actor.’ LOL”

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What did you do when your mother's response was so brief?

“It's not that she rejected my dream, but she didn't realize how strong my desire was. But by seeing me cry, she understood my needs, and arranged for me to participate in the Scottish Youth Theatre. This was an intense five-week immersion camp course and we immersed ourselves in acting from morning till night.”

“Can I tell you another story? In another movie, I was in cast with an actress named Lysette Anthony, and when I asked her about her background, she said, "I was modeling and was chosen for a heroin princess role in a movie." When I asked the name of the movie, she said ‘The Krull.’"

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So was she the princess you were holding hands with in your dream?

“Yes! So I told her I love her. LOL She asked me if I was the prince.”

“One thing that concerns me is that my life is too much about myself. I was passing a graveyard the other day and I thought, What are you when you die? A few generations later, when you're not even a memory of any living person, you're nothing. Maybe that's why I make movies. For longevity.”

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"Pain and suffering are necessary to make a job beautiful."

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“I think that’s beautiful. Some people say, ‘Don’t you think that that’s weird?’ And actually, no. Maybe I look at it too naively but I think that the fact that I have touched those people as opposed to another actor or person... Because when I choose my roles and very often when I play them, you imagine that if you connect with something like this, then there surely are going to be a few other people out there who are going to feel those feelings. I know that when I play roles I often feel those feeling so intensely I can’t describe it. And they are often exceptionally poignant or life-changing feelings, and I think that just some other people get that. And when they get that, they feel strongly about it. And how can you not be happy at that? I think it’s one of the nicest privileges as an actor is to know that you can move people in one moment, make them think about their lives, or make them laugh or make them cry or make them understand something. Or just make them feel something because I think so many of us, including myself, spend too much time not feeling enough, you know?”

~*~

"I'm one of those guys who always have a good time on a film. I don't worry about who's mad at whom, sleeping with whom. I feel so f -- king grateful not to be sitting in a law office that I just let everything roll right off me."

~*~

Fifty years from now, what will you remember the most about this experience?

“My first scene with the little boy, where he comes up and gives me a big hug. There are few moments in movies that can make you go straight from laughter to crying. Moments that are both funny and sweet, but also melancholy and tragic. I loved that scene. Also because it had a lot of personal reverberation with me and my situation from when my father turned up out of the blue. I so identified with the little boy.”
You almost sound like you are getting choked up.

“Totally. (He laughs.) You know, I went to the BAFTA screening of the film, and during the last five minutes, I literally cried. I remembered hearing the music and seeing the setting and I got all choked up. I couldn't help it. I have so much affection toward this story and how it turned out. I'm so glad I had the foresight to see its truth, beauty and charm in the script. And that others got it, too.”

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As I watched him speak passionately about his new film, Beowulf & Grendel, I realized that his charm is like an infinite number Endless.

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When he arrived in Japan, many of those female phans rushed to welcome him at the airport. "It was so beautiful! I was so happy that I called my mom right away, exaggerated and told her that I was greeted by 20,000 fans. (chuckle) I'm really close to my mom, and am going on a vacation with her. We're making the plan for it."

Hum, could the reason he's still single at the age of 35 be that he has a mother complex? "Ha ha (laughter) good question! But no. I just haven't met a woman who accepts me the way I am. Would you (the woman interviewer) marry me?"

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And though he might be experiencing the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, it's clear his Scottish homeland is very much where the heart is.

"I get back as often as I can," he says.

~*~

"I have family and friends there and they keep me down to earth. I enjoy LA and am thrilled that I'm getting the work out there, but it's great to come back to people who really know you. I had a birthday recently and I wasn't going to do anything but all my mates persuaded me and it turned out to be the best night. Me, surrounded by all my old mates from home. You can't beat that."

~*~

These days, Butler looks a little older than his 35 years. It’s not so much his appearance, but his manner. He is, he says, “an old soul”. Indeed, he sometimes talks as if he has already done it all and seen it all.

“I think it’s like you travel along on a path,” he says, “where sometimes you venture off course a bit and, when you’re younger, you’re like a young animal who doesn’t know you should stick to that path. So you tend to veer off more sharply than you do as you get older. Then finally, as time goes on, you realise that sticking to the path as much as you can isn’t quite as exciting – but it’s a damn sight nicer.”

Television:

"I have enough experience and foresight to know that my career will never make me happy. It can cover up cracks and give me a lot of fulfillment, but it can never fully fulfill me because a career is not a spiritual thing. I would be scared to think that it could. You have moments of convincing yourself it could because you always base your happiness on some future event - ‘If I get that part, everything will be all right.’"Even when I said, ‘If I can only get sober, I’ll be happy.’ No. I got sober, I’m much happier, but it didn’t make me 100% happy. I used to think if my career took off as an actor, I’d be happy. No. It has made me much happier, but not 100% happy.""If I were to fall in love and have a wonderful relationship and a family, I could imagine saying, ‘Wow, this is what it’s all about.’ But how many people have that? But if you could say it would be a relationship that was good..." He laughs. "And the film would go mega. And my family would live forever. Then I’d be happy!"

Books:

"I heard this guy say to me once there's nothing like a badass to make a girl's heart beat faster, you know, and I've often lived that rule myself!"
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“I always felt a bit of a loner in some ways. Even though at school I was one of the main guys in the crowd I always felt a wee bit different. Maybe sometimes better, but a lot of the time just f***ing weirder. Sometimes worse. Just thinking, when am I going to get it together?”

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Excerpts from Articles

"I was recently in a relationship, and having no time for it was completely the problem," he says. "We both knew that, and it breaks my heart now when I think about it, to be honest. Then again, it’s so easy to blame that on your career. I know I’m not the best guy for a relationship. I’m not fantastic at them. But on top of that, I’m an actor who’s particularly busy right now, so I’ve got no f**king chance."

Given that he’s starring on the big screen with a fiercely independent, very challenging woman in Lara Croft, does Butler like a challenge when it comes to women?

"I do, but it’s a strange question to ask at the moment. Generally I love the challenge, but right now I have neither the time nor the inclination. I’m hanging out with all the guys in St Louis, and there’s a high level of testosterone. We’ll be out somewhere and I’ll see a beautiful woman and I’ll think, ‘That could be the love of my life.’ But I just don’t even have the energy to say hello."

Being of no fixed abode only increases his problem. "Yeah, it doesn’t help when you tell a woman you’re homeless," he laughs. He lives between Los Angeles and London, as many British actors on a certain rung of the career ladder are able to do - and moan about. Does he like LA? "It’s not that Los Angeles is an evil necessity. It’s just not my favourite city on the planet. I often find that when you’re in LA you’re sitting there going, ‘Is there something going on that I don’t know about? Is there some big party I’m missing?’ I have great friends there, though, but I do find that the longer I stay there, the more it does my head in.”

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The Phantom of the Opera and Dear Frankie are opening within a month of each other."I want to be with my mother when she sees them. They're going to have her weeping. I always wished I'd grow up and people would look at me and think, wow, sexy. Now people will look at me and weep. They're not roles that have women wanting to screw you.They make women just want to hug you."He lights another cigarette. "Which I love, " he says. "I'm big into hugging. I'll be happy with that."

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With views looking on to the Empire State Building, the apartment has two floors and a huge roof terrace. In many ways it could be described as a family home - and Gerard is keen to have kids of his own in it. He said: “I'm getting broody - I'm broody and brooding. I recently visited Indonesia and I was on the beach watching all these families. Indonesian babies are the most beautiful in the world and they're all so friendly. That made me think 'wouldn't it be great?' I have been caught up in the whirlwind of this business too much to give enough time to all that, but I'd love to have a family.”

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How does he keep doing it? Partly because he can act (as he demonstrates in the Scottish tearjerker Dear Frankie). And partly, I suspect, because he is an incorrigible flirt. It’s one of his greatest assets. We conduct our interview on Hampstead Heath. “Do you want to get jiggy with it now?” he says as we recline on the grass. “Or shall we leave it till later?”

There’s something of the big kid about him. He watches, distracted, as a kestrel hovers over the grass, then stands up, over-excited. “Look. Has he got one? Is he going down? It’s really unusual to see them hover that low.”

It’s perhaps his mother in him. She was always, he says, watching the wildlife out of the back window, making up stories about the blackbirds, or going out to film the foxes at night. Butler seems to want to talk about his mum. In past interviews he has dwelt rather more on his relationship with his absent father, who left them when he was just a few years old, and it’s as if he wants to correct the balance. She was, he says, the dominant influence on his life: both mother and father to him. A tough lady, not afraid of a fight.

“I hate confrontation, unless I really lose my temper,” he says. “Whereas my mum is very principled and, if people cross that line, she’ll tell them and it doesn’t matter who’s looking or who’s watching or if it’s in public.

“She used to be, ‘Excuse me, I think you’re wrong and I think you better say you’re wrong’. I’d be thinking, ‘Stop it, stop it mum’.”

Just last week he was back in Scotland, hanging out at her house with its big patio and view of the distant mountains. It is, he says, a tonic for his soul. “My mum will say, ‘Get in there and wash those dishes’. I say, ‘Mum, you can’t. I’m a movie star, remember that.’ She’s like, ‘Shut your mouth and get in there.’”

*~*~*

It seemed like an undiscovered gem. While we're filming it, Emily Mortimer and I were saying, "'Not many people will see this movie. But it's a crime not to produce such a wonderful love story, regardless of it being popular."

How did you develop the character for your role?

I have the dark melancholic side to me as well aside, and believed that if I mixed those elements, I could play this role. Also, I have a friend who traveled around the world after he lost his love, and I had his personality in mind as a reference. He's intelligent, emotionally rich, and sensitive, but he doesn't show that outside.

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The lawyers must have thought you were mad moving down to London in pursuit of that dream?

“Honestly? This is the thing that scares me at times. I'd never have made that decision had I not been mad at that point. And I was. It was such a strange part of my life that I look back now and think: 'Was that really me?' It felt like a completely different person, and yet, had I not been in that space, completely insane, I wouldn't have chosen that route. But I felt that I had screwed everything up, and amid the horror of that realisation there was a sense of incredible freedom. To just do what I really wanted to do, sort my life out, get myself together and follow something that I really believed in was a fantastic opportunity. Now I look back and I see how much people who followed similar paths struggle, I think: 'Why would I ever have done that?' Because the chances of me progressing anywhere were so small. I've been lucky.”

*~*~*

But Butler realizes that he's probably more than a few steps away from fatherhood. "I'd love to have kids, but I'd have to stay in a relationship that lasts more than a week," he says. This would be a difficult feat, he adds, because his filming schedule doesn't allow him to stay in the same place for very long.

"I'll be on location and see a woman who I'm interested in. I look, think about it, and then say, 'What's the point?' That's the downside of working all the time."

*~*~*

He's been living the clean life in LA for the past three years but also owns a home in Hampstead, London. He's suddenly single, having split from his girlfriend of eight months two days before we meet, though he says he'd "love to fall head over heels in love with someone again". Was she famous? "No, Not at all. Actors date other actors because it's convenient. You're on set, they're on set, you bond, and then you leave and it's not real."

So who fares better, British or American women? "That's a tough question!" He laughs, lighting his fourth cigarette. "This is a generalisation but, on the whole, I'd say American women are probably better looking. They look after themselves, though in LA they go too far and that's not sexy. But I'm going to move on now because I'm going to annoy people if I carry on talking about this. I've never dated an actress - well, not that I can think of, but then I do have a terrible memory."

~*~

The film's director, Joel Schumacher, called a few days later from London. ''In Europe, actors don't expect to be movie stars,'' he said. ''Gerry is of that school. They don't know if they're ever going to be rich and famous. In America, where everyone believes fame and money are their birthright, actors too often only want to become stars. If that happens, especially if it happens young, it often breeds a kind of infantilism.'

Butler, born in Glasgow, spent his early 20's studying law. His father had abandoned the family, and acting did not seem like a serious, practical pursuit. ''I was a terrible lawyer,'' he confessed, taking a long swig of his vitamin-infused water. ''I hated the law, so I went out at night and drank and partied. A lot.'' He laughed. ''I'm very extreme, very Catholic. There's the good me, and the bad me. And back then, I drank a lot -- it was a constant search for the perfect buzz. Sometimes I miss that search. I still cherish those dark moments, but I don't want to go there again. I stopped drinking for good a few years ago. I had a moment of truth. Well, actually, I had 600 moments of truth. I went back and forth, but I was sick of being sick, and tired of being tired. Now I save my pain and anxiety for work.'

*~*~*

After the interview, he heard about his next itinerary, and happily announced, "Yeah, I get to go have a massage after this!" but he still shook hands or hugged with every staff member at the interview. He looked more like a boy who was just let out from his homework but is greeting the house guests before he goes out to play.

He started singing loudly when we talked about his singing, then stood up and gestured his rock throwing motions simulating the sound of the rocks hitting the water, when we talked about it. When he thought of something funny, he laughed so hard that the tears rolled out of his eyes. Looking at him like this in person, I wondered where that mysterious Phantom image came from, but this 'ButlerAss' guy's BAD, adorable, and sexy charm completely melted me. Especially when he talked about his longing for his father and his whole hearted love for his mother, his eyes were exactly those of the Stranger's in DF.

*~*~*

Butler plays the handsome stranger—his character’s name in the credits actually is “Stranger”—who sails into the lives of single mother Lizzie (played by Emily Mortimer) and her deaf son, Frankie (Jack McElhone). It’s a bittersweet, stirring performance of few words and one amazing kiss that unfolds so achingly slowly in real time that you find yourself holding your breath.“That kiss said so much that you can’t explain,” Butler agrees. “The beauty of ‘Dear Frankie’ is how it sucks you in, in a very human way. I mean, how refreshing that it has the courage to be sweet.”

*~*~*

"I didn't even know he was alive until he turned up one day when I was 16 years old. My mother left him when I was two and brought my brother and sister and me back from Canada, where we'd lived. I saw my father again when I was four but the older I got the more I began to think it didn't really happen, although I never asked my mum about it. It was something I kept very much to myself. And then when he turned up, it was out of the blue. I came home from school and my step-dad . . . who was only my mother's boy-friend at the time . . . said, 'Keep your jacket on, your dad's home'. I walked into this restaurant, going to the different tables, wondering is this my dad, is that my dad, which I can tell you was a bizarre experience, not really a nice one. When I saw him I sensed at once it was him. I didn't realise until then how much sorrow had built up inside of me."

He breaks off, unable to speak for a moment. "I'm afraid I find it hard to talk about, " he says. "So, that scene in the movie where Frankie comes home, and his mother says, 'Frankie, this is your father, ' it was like looking at my own life. I could see in Emily Mortimer something of what my mother had gone through and how she basically sacrificed her life to bring up the three of us. I actually had a great childhood. We used kick the shit out of each other, but we were very close. But there are things that lie deep down in your soul that you don't know you have until they're brought out. My mum has been through so much with me. She's seen the wonderful parts of my life, as I have with hers, and she's seen the worst parts. She's had to help me through a lot."

Like when he was let go from the law firm just a week away from qualifying. "I was the first trainee solicitor ever to be fired in Scotland, " he says. "I think we both knew I wasn't cut out for law. I didn't have the heart for it. It was hard to ring my mother to tell her. I knew how upset and disappointed and heart-broken she was."

*~*~*

“I sat next to him and greeted him. Then as soon as I asked him ‘Why didn't you contact us?’ I burst into tears. I couldn't stop crying for the next five hours. I kept crying like a mad man. I myself didn't know how emotional I was about him up until then. It was really weird.”

*~*~*

Your life is full of these coincidences... What happened to your father?

“We became friends. When we reunited and started communicating, he was ill and told me, "I'll die soon. So let's go on a Caribbean cruise ship. It'll be our farewell cruise." He was on a crutch then but still could walk, so we went on the Caribbean cruise together.”

How old were you then?

“22. The night before we left for the cruise, I was in Toronto where my father lived, and went to a party and had too much to drink. I was jumping from one column to another at the end of the terrace on top of a 46-story building.”

You're not a Spiderman. You could have fallen off.

“The next day, we flew to Barbados and got on a ship and started drinking again. When I got the tab, I saw that I had 16 Long Island Ice Tea and 16 Heinekens.”

What?! Wow...

“Right after that I went out on the deserted main deck and started throwing the deck chairs into the ocean. LOL Then I was hanging from the anchor which was 150 feet above the ocean, singing "We are sailing. I can laugh at it now, but I was really crazy then. Absolutely crazy. This story is only one of a thousand episodes I have. Ahaha .”(LOL)

That's nothing to laugh about... Phew...

“It's a Scottish thing to climb up the tall objects when you're drunk. Scots love to climb onto the tall buildings, towers, and water supply towers.” LOL

Trouble makers, aren't they? LOL

“After that, I went to see my father in Canada a several times. He was a pleasant, nutty, uncommon individual with a strong personality. He was a great story teller, and embellished the truth a bit, so you couldn't always tell whether he was lying or not.” LOL

What did he do for living?

“He did many things, but none lucrative. Once, he was in an umbrella business and wore this cap that's shaped like an umbrella and walked around in the town of Toronto. He was wearing it even when we went to lunch, and I had to ask him to take it off.”

Why did you decide to quit drinking when you became an actor?

“Because I was drinking way too much. I had the same drinking problem as my father. I sometime wonder if I wasted many years of my life because of my drinking. I had many painful experiences. Sometimes I couldn't believe I was still alive.”

*~*~*

We are told that Scots love to drink. Do you like to drink also?

How do I answer this question…? I used to love to drink. At one point in my life, I was not interested in anything else but drinking. It may sound crazy, but in retrospect, I was blessed to have the period of life like that. Because of my drinking, I almost ruined my life, and would say that it made me loose my career to succeed as a lawyer. But if it wasn’t for this, I may have been a lawyer but living a miserable life, and never would have achieved this happy life as an actor. So that was not such a bad thing. I had drinks with whoever wanted to drink with me, and those friends who drank with me taught me many great lessons. So I can say that drinking ruined one of my careers, and nurtured my other career. Because of my experience from this terrible period, I understand that the life has its ups and downs. I also understand that there is a part of me inside which becomes hysteric and very emotional, but that’s a part of my soul. In the past eight years, I have not had a drop of alcohol. Now I love drinking coffee, and also drink coke once in a while.

How did you prepare to play this nameless role of the “Stranger?”

I always try to inject what’s inside of me into my role. I thoroughly discussed with the director as to what kind of person this man is, and deliberated on what kind of experience he had and what he really is like as an individual. After you see this movie, you can see that he is a wise, considerate person. But in the beginning, he seems to be withholding all that inside of him. That could be because he had a life full of sorrow. Unless something in his life happens to him, he won’t be able to release his feelings. He’s too jaded to want to connect with the outside world. He has a strong physique, always has his jaws tightened, and internalizes his feelings. He was a mentally closed person, but once he starts to encounter with the incidents (of getting together with Frankie and his family), he starts connecting with the world and walking on the new passage. How do I play a man like that? For this, I recalled what kind of issues I had as a child, one of which was very similar to Frankie’s, or a person I loved very much but ended up loosing in my twenties, and try to echo my soul in the Stranger’s personality.

To be frank, when I first read this story, I felt from the bottom of my heart that “this is MY story.” I have not been trained to be an actor, and am the type to act with my intuition, and I’ve never felt so spontaneously intuitive in acting as I did playing this role in “DF.” The day I was assigned to this role, I thought I could start right away that day. But since I had ample time to prepare, I was able to dig down deep into his character and to enhance this role.

Heroes:

*~*~*

Do you feel that you have to have a strong physical chemistry with your leading lady to have the relationship feel legitimate to the audience, or can chemistry be faked?

”Well, I think it helps, without a doubt, to have a strong chemistry with the other actor. And whether it’s a sexual or friendly chemistry, some kind of connection to play on is important. I had always loved Emily as an actress, and the minute I heard she was in it I thought, "This is going to be a classy project." (Noise of multiple cell phones ringing wildly.) You know people have just dumped their stuff in my room, and now I have cell phones going off that don’t belong to me. It’s driving me (expletive) crazy. Uh, what was I talking about?”

Um, you always loved Emily Mortimer as an actress.

”Yes, the second we met we got on so well. She is the coolest actress I ever worked with, and the most easygoing, fun and down to earth. . . . Her brilliance made it a lot easier for me to play my role, especially the scene where we kiss.”

I’ve never seen such a dramatic kissing scene with such little actual contact.

”Ah, it’s captivating, isn’t it?”

They are all romantic roles but you never actually get the girl.

”I know — it’s like my life. I never really thought about that. I never do really get the girl in any of these movies. It was that way with ‘‘Dracula 2000,’’ and the same in ‘‘Attila.’’ I did this wonderful miniseries called ‘‘The Jury’’ in the UK, and it was kind of the same in that as well.”

~*~

"I saw my dad one day when I was four, and then he didn't stay in touch," he says. "I didn't see him again until I was 16. Didn't even know he was alive. And then he turned up."

Butler spent the next few summers with his father, making up for lost time with a man he quickly grew to love, and enjoying the freedom that holidays in Canada gave him. Meanwhile, after getting good grades at a Catholic comprehensive school in Paisley, he went to Glasgow University to study law. Although he suspected within his first week that he didn't want to be a lawyer, he completed his degree, but spent his spare time in pursuit of fun. He must be one of the few presidents of the Glasgow University Law Society to have been in jail, "for being too drunk once."

It was during a year out of academia, spent in Los Angeles, that Butler discovered his father was dying. Fun rapidly turned to wild times and Butler began developing a drinking problem.

"He got cancer when I was spending a year in America just bumming around," says the actor. "I went up to see him before we went on a cruise round the Caribbean, and I lost it a bit. I was up on the top floor of the building one night, jumping around on the edge, literally 47 stories up. And the next day I was hanging off a cruise ship, going a bit nuts."

Butler returned to LA, believing he would never see his father again - "We didn't know whether he had two weeks or six months" - but three months later, he was at his bedside. "All the time, I had my family saying, 'You actually don't owe your dad this', but it just felt right. I spent the last three weeks with him, literally watching him die. I was drinking a lot then. When he was dying, I remember screaming at his nurse, 'Save him, save him', but he was so brave. I really have a lot of respect for him."

~*~

He says he has little time for a relationship - and even less inclination to commit to one. "I would love to fall madly in love with someone, but I'm kind of bad at that. I want a relationship until it happens, and then it's, aha, aha." He laughs. "I find it difficult to imagine how I could have had a girlfriend in 2000 when I spent four months in Toronto, a month in New Orleans, three and a half months in Lithuania, two months in LA and a month in London."

~*~

''I didn't see my father again until he visited us in Scotland 14 years later,'' says Butler, ''but after that I saw him in Toronto several times. He was nuts, very funny and a wonderful man who lost fortunes several times. I lived in his apartment when he went off to Togo in Africa to buy $50,000 worth of gold. But he bought $50,000 worth of copper by mistake, then wound up in a Togo hospital with malaria. My French-Canadian stepmother flew off to rescue him, slipped on an airport ramp, broke her ankle and wound up in the same hospital as my dad.'' A wild child with a penchant for travel himself, Butler drove his mother and ''various bankers'' crazy by taking off to visit friends and relatives in North America on several occasions. In 1987, he visited aunts in Alaska and San Diego, where he did clean-up jobs at Sea World for a summer. In 1991, he took a year off from law school to work in a traveling carnival at California county fairs making a ''small fortune'' bilking small kids out of money with the Whacky Wire concession.

But Butler had his heart set on becoming an actor at the age of 12 after taking part in a school play. Seeing the mediocre action-fantasy film ''Krull'' (1983) made up his mind. Then he entered Glasgow University's law school at the age of 17 for a five-year academic program driven by ego and a need for financial security. An excellent student, he was a rotten trainee solicitor for two years at one of Glasgow's most prestigious law firms. And then he got fired an impossible feat in the British system of training for the law. Butler had a week to go in the program when a partner in the firm observed, ''You have the makings of a wonderful lawyer, but you just don't seem to care.''

''A bit crazy, I was a party animal showing disrespect for my profession, who found the law exceedingly dull,'' he recalls. ''This was the most unhappy period in my life. Looking back, I was the luckiest man alive to have screwed up.''

Two days after his dismissal at the end of 1995, Butler started his new life as an actor in London. He found a series of ''crap'' jobs immediately, including a brief gig demonstrating toys at a trade show.

''There I was, wearing the same suit as when I was a solicitor, explaining the virtues of toy cares to a group of bored merchants. My life had suddenly changed,'' he laughs. ''I had been Head Boy of my school, the president of Glasgow University Law Society, part of a firm that was the Queen's solicitors in Scotland and the managers of the Carnegie estate.''

But a few weeks later, Steven Berkoff who plays his uncle in 'Attila' offered him a small part in the London production of ''Coriolanus'' and has made his living from acting ever since. While rehearsing the play, the London-based bachelor was offered a leading part in the stage-version of ''Trainspotting,'' and followed it up with such movies as ''Mrs. Brown,'' ''Fast Food,'' ''One More Kiss,'' ''The Cherry Orchard'' and ''Shooters.''

''All I want now,'' he laughs, ''is to fall in love and become a huge movie star.''

“I had some terrible times in my twenties. I was outgoing and crazy, but that just showed up my insecurity and instability. I was someone who wasn’t doing what he wanted to in life. I’d gone from being a 16-year-old who couldn’t wait to grasp life to a 22-year-old who truly didn’t care if he died in his sleep.”

The prestigious Edinburgh law firm with which he had trained fired him weeks before he qualified; seven years studying law, all wasted. He headed for London and for five months did “stupid jobs, telemarketing, demonstrating toys at toy fairs, getting people to sign up for boilers.”

His break came while he was helping an old friend from the Scottish Youth Theatre, now a casting director. In a Soho coffee shop they chatted with the formidable actor-director-playwright Steven Berkoff, who took a shine to Butler. “He said, ‘Are you an actor or what?’ I said, ‘No, but I’d like to be.’”Berkoff gave him a role in a production of Coriolanus, and Butler embarked on a theatre career in London, at one point playing the lead role of Renton in a fringe production of Trainspotting. In his 1997 film debut, he played Billy Connolly’s younger brother in Mrs. Brown. This ushered in other small film roles, paving the way for his second, successful assault on America.

Butler has now put his troubled past behind him: “I’m much more mature, conservative and settled. I haven’t drunk or done drugs for five and a half years. It’s made a huge difference to my life. I went into programmes. I took care of it.”

He lives alone in his bachelors pad, with its dark, masculine furniture, an enormous flat screen television jutting from one wall, a dining table of baronial proportions and a huge canvas of Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur on one wall. But he does tentatively admit to a girlfriend outside the film business: “She’s a sweetheart, she’s beautiful. But I don’t want to say more. I don’t have a very good history of relationships.”

Constantly traveling does not help. Butler is currently in St. Louis, filming The Game of Their Lives, about the USA football team’s shock victory over England in the 1950 World Cup; he plays the goalkeeper, Frank Borghi. He will go straight from that film to playing the Phantom, about whom he says, “That character breaks my heart. I think he represents the fear that so many of us have – being alone and never having the things we have a right to have: a companion, life, love. I think there’s always a deep-down fear in all of us that suddenly we’ll become repugnant to everybody else.”

He feels he has been given a second chance in life, and grasped it. “With acting, the more I take the magic out of it and the less I walk around saying, ‘Isn’t this amazing? Isn’t this a dream come true?’ the better I do. Now I think, that’s my job. This is what I do. I work harder at it now.” ~ August 9, 2003

So, you're not recognized on the street?

Here's an example: I go into this shop in London all the time. After a few years the owner says, "What do you do?" I said, "I'm an actor." He'd seen every movie that I have ever done and didn't recognize me from any of them. I don't know if it's a bad thing or not. At least people don't say, "Oh, look at Gerry Butler, he's got his finger up his nose!" This job is very different for me because I used to be a lawyer.

Were you good at it?

No, not really. I was really desperately unhappy to be honest.

Are you in a relationship right now?

No.

We hear that actors get more women than lawyers?

Yeah? I wonder when that'll start happening.

At least if you were a lawyer, you wouldn't have to do all those crappy jobs that many struggling actors have to do.

I didn't do those jobs, but I am not saying being a lawyer isn't a crappy job.

What motivates you?

Fear and success.

You have landed the starring role in the movie version of the upcoming Phantom of the Opera. Can you sing?

Yeah, I can sing, but I am not trained. I had to take classes for that.

Is there any dancing in the Phantom of the Opera?

I don't have to dance do I? Get my agent on the phone! You're scaring me!

~*~

Did he and Angelina hang out together off set. "We got on great, but we never really hung out. She wanted to spend lots of time with her baby Maddox. He's so beautiful and such a little character and she'd give him these mad haircuts like a Mohican."

These are broody words from Gerry, who's rumored, like his character, to be a bit of a bad boy himself. Is it true? "What have you heard?" he laughs. "To be honest, I am very much a bad boy, but with a good heart." So you're of the Colin Farrell school of celebrity? "No. I think Colin makes outrageous comments and uses that image and it's become a bit contrived. Personally, I've learned to keep my mouth shut." Indeed, an innocent joke he made about Angelina being lucky to work with him, " had the press banging on my mum's door - I hate it. It's an easier life if you don't say stupid things."

~*~

He's been a bit of an action hero off-screen too. He was sitting by the River Tay on a day off four years ago, when he heard a young boy shouting for help from the river. "His mates came over to me and said, 'Please help, our friend's drowning.' I asked, 'Are you taking the piss?' I had absolutely no idea what I was doing but I jumped in. It must have been the worst life-saving exercise of all time. I just grabbed him and swam back. He was unconscious and a guy on the river bank gave him mouth to mouth." Soon after, Gerry was awarded a certificate of bravery from the Royal Humane Society and still seems completely overawed by the experience.

Gerry's full of the unexpected. One minute he takes himself very seriously. The next, he's cracking jokes at his own expense. I met him once before and I was sure he was completely drunk, but he's been teetotal for several years. Why? Were you drinking too much? "Exactly." He doesn't elaborate other than to say, "It's funny being the sober one in a room full of drunk people because you realize how much shit everyone talks. But people were very patient with me when I was going through a bad time."

~*~

You were cast as the rough diamond in this. Yet he’s quite noble, your character (The Stranger), like a stranger coming into town in a Western.

I’ve played a lot of characters like this. I don’t want to give too much away about the movie, but I love that, what you said about him being like a stranger coming into town like in a Western. I actually thought he could be a contract killer. If you dip into the movie at the point where I come into the restaurant for the first time, to meet the mother, this could just as easily be a hit. Because that’s as much as I give away. What happens after that is not necessarily what you might expect, but in a gentle way, so that you don’t feel duped.

How was it working with Emily Mortimer?

She’s the coolest chick on the planet. Everybody that meets her, and I’ve hung out with her a lot now, just falls in love with her. And she doesn’t try to do that!

And of course you work with a young Scottish lad, Jack McElhone.

Jack’s a character. I learned a lot from Jack, believe it or not. Because that kid just turns up and does whatever he thinks is right. He’s not bound by any rules. Sometimes you could think he didn’t give a shit about the movie, which he actually did, because he worked very hard. But he had this cocky laissez-faire attitude, like he’d rather be playing football or eating sweets off to the side or punching the hell out of the focus puller rather than sitting down in front of the camera and doing the scene. Sometimes I had to be the strong hand there and be like ‘sit the f--- down and do this’ and that helped the father/son thing. But he’s great. He’s very understated. He’s playing a deaf kid and a mute kid and going through a lot but I watched him a lot and thought ‘that’s so brave of you, to do nothing in that scene.’ He’s going to be a big star.

~*~

"One of the things we would do as lawyers at the fancy dress Halloween cheese'n'wine ceilidh is drink a glass of wine and smash it off our heads. I always had to go that bit further. I would line up five glasses then smash them off my head. One night I did it when I was in Paisley with my buddies. I was so drunk I stuck it right in my nose! It bled for six hours; I lost so much blood I was getting weak. And I had this big flap of skin hanging off."

He can laugh about it now, with the easy confidence of someone who hasn't touched a drop for "nine years and one month". No, he'll never drink again, and, no he doesn't miss it. "I'm at the stage where I've never had a drink. I have no connection to it whatsoever. The smoking is my next battle. But we're born on earth to be set with these challenges."

~*~

"It's fun to party in Hollywood, but I try not to do it too much. If you party more than two days here you start to go insane. It sucks the life out of you and I feel it erodes your spirituality and goodness.”

~*~

“Life passes you by in LA. That’s why everyone’s into yoga or something. They’re all searching for something that the city doesn’t give them. And you’re always in your f**king car. I’m like a little puppy dog, looking at the person in the car next to mine for some sense of life. And they see it as a victory if they catch you – ‘You looked at me and I looked away. Ha ha ha!’”

~*~

“It’s weird, they had been casting around the world for four months (for Dracula), but the casting director had a psychic friend who said, ‘I don’t know what you’re worried about, he just hasn’t come in yet.’ And the day before I arrived she phoned and said, ‘He’s coming tomorrow,’ which is amazing, don’t you think?”

~*~

But he doesn't want to get "too deep" into the self-destructive aspect of his nature back then; it's too pat, he says, to draw a link between his father being absent for most of his childhood (they were reconciled, but he died of cancer when Butler was 22). "They were crazy times," he admits. "Some of them were done in fun. Some of them were done through a lot of pain that was going on. But now I love the fact that all of that's happened. It's toughened me in a severe way."

~*~

“I went to find the house we had lived in [in Montreal] and when I was walking down the street, I noticed a rainbow in the sky. I know this sounds weird but it really did end right at our old house. It’s one of the eeriest experiences I’ve ever had.”

~*~

How has he managed to remain a bachelor?
“Actually, I keep my very personal life personal. I’m pretty good about being open and talking, but I think that I don’t let many people in that much. I’ve always been that way,” he said. “But actually I was in quite a long relationship up until very recently.” Anyone we’d know? “Oh, I wouldn’t say.”And with that, this king has spoken. ~ March ’07 article

~*~

“Every time I trained, it made me feel more like a Spartan, more like a king, more like I was impressing my men and more like they would be willing to follow me. Also, that fire is burning inside you, and then you can go completely the opposite way. I literally walked around Montreal with my shoulders back and my chest up. Just that feeling of real inner-confidence.

Then you can fun with the other things because it was actually difficult to suck all that in and let out... He had a lot of things going on. There's an arrogance there, there's a confidence, there's a humor, there's a dryness, there's a passion, there's a certain amount of humanity, and then, the guy is a nut job. I mean, he's crazy, and there's a fearlessness that borders on insane. To try to get all those in, with a man who really doesn't talk that much was a challenge, and then to do it all in front of a green screen.”

~*~

His Reputation as a Sex Symbol: Butler’s already hearty reputation as a major sex symbol is only going to increase with 300. But bring the subject up and the actor’s quick to point out it’s not something he cares about all that much. “Listen, I’d rather… I’ll be honest, I don’t get too caught up in that. I’m really far more about, ‘Is the film good? Did I perform okay? Did people dig it?’ And if people want to go further than that, of course, that’s a huge compliment. I would rather that then they say, ‘He’s an ugly son of a bitch. That Gerry Butler has no sex appeal whatsoever.’ It’s good to be appreciated. I’d rather be appreciated for talent than just looks, but hey, I’ll take that as well.”

~*~

And Speaking of Getting Hurt: He did, every single day.

“And not because the stunt guys weren’t amazing, but you can’t be around this kind of equipment and going through this kind of stuff and be so pumped up and not hurt yourself. One of the best ones I did, I turned to do this move and it was so well done I thought. It went right into the side of somebody’s shield and it just caught the edge of it and it ripped. My hands were cut to shreds… They wouldn’t even let me fly. The next day I tried to fly, we finished, packed all my stuff and went to the airport. The immigration woman said, ‘So you’re going to the States?’ I said, ‘Yes I am.’ She said, ‘What’s up with your hands?’ And I said I’d been scraping the ground and doing a film with swords. She said, ‘Come with me.’ So I missed my flight; I had to take all my stuff back home again.”

Butler swears it’s a true story. “Yeah! And my driver, who became a good friend of mine, he was an assistant as well, I’d just said goodbye to him, given him a hug and said, ‘I’ll miss you, man. Thanks for everything.’ Meanwhile he goes to get breakfast in the airport and meanwhile I go to get grilled, and they say, ‘Okay, you’re fine to go.’ So my flight is missed, I walk back out, get all my stuff and I’m walking out and he’s walking back from the breakfast place.

They eventually let me in but what happened was she sees a guy coming through, she didn’t recognize me, she just sees this guy who looks a little crazy. I promised her the craziness in my eyes and my hands, which were all cut to shreds, and I gave her a really silly answer. I told her, ‘I’m an actor and doing a film with swords.’”

~*~

"I feel that very few people have seen what my agents call The Gerry Juice. Without sounding arrogant, it's the guy who's just silly and funny rather than this really intense character," notes Butler.

"Often people meet me and they go, "My, God. I didn't expect you to be so light and easy. I thought you were going to be dark and depressed, and that you'd be staring at me with those eyes as if you'd want to kill me.'

"I'm probably more like a puppy dog than any kind of ruler. In my life I have no command."

~*~

"You don't look at a bunch of Spartans and go, 'I wonder which guy is going to pop out and be the king,' " said Zack Snyder, the film's director. "In one shot you want to go, 'OK, that's him,' and that was how I felt about Gerry."

~*~

"I just know Gerry as the guy that he is," Snyder said. "So for me it's like... I appreciate them... I monitor their sites, and I know what they're up to. I have discovered their whole subculture, and I'm very supportive of them, and I try to help them out whenever I can, like get some piece of Gerry memorabilia or steal something from Gerry and give it to them."

~ Zack Snyder to SciFiWire

~*~

At London Premiere of 300:

“This is nuts,” exclaimed Butler. “There’s a lot of people out there and they are all screaming. It’s amazing but it’s very stressful as well, because there’s thousands of people and you only sign about ten or fifteen autographs, but people are shouting, “I’ve come all the way from America!!” – it makes you feel like a bag of s**t!”

~*~

"There were probably three working actors in the whole of Scotland in 1985/6. So I went into law. Then I thought I could do my diploma, then I thought I should at least do my traineeship and the next thing you know seven years have gone past and you are facing up to reality of winding up 65 and retired having lived a career I didn't want. It just didn't sit right with me.

I love where I am. I feel I am exactly where I should be and if tomorrow my career should fall apart that is exactly what should happen."

~*~

"I hate to admit it but I'm really beginning to enjoy doing the old romps because I've done so many now. Of course at first I was really nervous but I've really got into my stride, shall we say. The only time I truly had stagefright was in a movie called Little White Lies with Tara Fitzgerald. This was because I've always fancied Tara like crazy and suddenly I'm been asked to get into bed with her and act out a sex scene. I was scared in case she realised I wasn't acting. In Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married with Sara Stockbridge I'm at it with her on the sofa and the director was like 'cut, cut - Gerry I said CUT.' I also get to have a fun time with Charlotte Rampling in The Cherry Orchard, as her horny, roguish manservant. Then I got Simone Lahbib and Nicola Stapleton into bed, before they tied me up and did a runner. And I recently finished up six months in the West End in Suddenly Last Summer. I play a doctor who is asked to lobotomise Rachel. She's a lovely girl and very sexy - and I got to snog her every single night on stage. But honestly how can I complain. I mean what other job pays you to kiss and fondle the most beautiful women around."

~*~

"My best disguise is just me. If I were to put on a mask and sweep my hair back, or if I were to grow my hair to my ass, or make myself look ridiculous, then I would get recognized."

~*~

Q. Did you grow up fantasising about roles like Leonidas as a child?

Yeah, I did. As a kid we spent a lot of time as a family, every weekend heading up the west coast of Scotland to the Highlands. All we seemed to do was head through beautiful hills and valleys that were filled with the great history. So you were steeped in that history of Robert The Bruce, William Wallace and Bonnie Prince Charlie and all those great stories. It was always in my head.

Even having read Lord of the Rings when I was younger, it was always my fantasy to live in a fantasy. Funnily enough, I saw Krull when I was 15...I watched it recently and thought: "What a terrible movie." I loved it when I was younger. But then I had a dream a month later that I was in the film looking at all these wizards on the top of the mountain. I was standing there with the princess and I think we were blowing flames out of our mouth or our arse or something! I woke up the next day and that feeling as an actor to go into those worlds, or any world, was so powerful.

It was always in peaks and troughs of course. I'd ask myself: "Did I really want to do this?" Sometimes it was: "No, be sensible. Be a lawyer." But it kept coming back to haunt me and I kind of feel that it must have been my destiny in some ways.

Q. You've had a number of big films that didn't ignite the box office. Had you ever started to think that maybe your chance had gone?

Not really. I don't know whether it's spiritual development or trying to learn the psychologically with being an actor, but I realise the more I get into it that this was something I was always supposed to do. That allowed me to sit easiser in the life I was living. But that doesn't mean to say you just stroll through it. It takes work and the work is not always about acting. It's sometimes about how you deal with the ups and downs of hope, of expectation. I never got caught up in people saying: "This is the one." Or: "Why did this happen, or why didn't it?"

To me, all those jobs I did have been amazing experiences for one reason or another. I got paid [laughs] and I learned something. I think that's what helped me carry on because I've never really given out that energy of, "oh, I've lost my chance" or missed it in some way.

Q. So do you largely ignore people when they predict you'll be "the next big thing?"

Yeah. Even this weekend when it went crazy, I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it - it was awesome - but I didn't get overwhelmed by it. I have an ability, sometimes to my detriment, just to keep that self-congratulation or expectation in check. It was unbelievable and fantastic, but I still have to call my mum and I still have to get on with my day. But it just makes me really proud.

Q. What sort of preparation did you do for the role?

I have to say, considering how much time that I was training - working six hours a day - at that time most of your preparation comes from what's going on in your life, like a meditation. My training was all a meditation towards being this powerful person, sucking it all in and then going into my own life and examining the values that I have, that I don't have...I don't know how to give you a quick answer really. There was a lot of historical reading, the graphic novel, the training, the sword fighting, whatever. But it really came back to myself.

Q. How did you feel when you first started to play the role?

There were definitely some nerves floating about in there but I've done a lot of these big jobs where you know the pressure is on you but I can't do everybody else's thinking for them. I've learned to say: "Get on with your job, if you focus on your job and what you have to do everything else is an extreme waste of time."

If I'm sitting there worried about what the producers are thinking - and don't say I haven't done that - but if I can focus my energy into the story, what I'm trying to do and who I'm working with, that's a good way of keeping those things at bay. Some days you can even turn them into fun things. It's amazing some of the reactions you get when you take a role like the Phantom, you can use that energy to pump you up.

***

Everyone is talking about Gerard Butler, the Scots lead playing Leonidas. Never has an actor demanded so much attention on the screen and deserved it. It’s been a long time since an actor this good has been in a movie. Reminiscent of Heston and Olivier, I am anxious to see what is next in line for him.

- The Daily Pop; 2007

***

"And with that, an LA bitch named Lolita climbs into Butler’s lap and lovingly licks his biceps. She is his miniature pug, and he clearly dotes on her. Even modern heroes have their weaknesses."

~ End excerpt from ‘Man of Action’ article

***

What was it like working with Gerard Butler in The Phantom?

Emmy Rossum: Awesome! I mean, he is one of my best friends. I’m an only child, so he’s kind of like my big brother. I know that’s a huge letdown to a lot of fans that would like us to grow up and get married! You know, there are all these websites that are like, “Gemmy Forever!” They’ve kinda created us as a little Brangelina, and they’ll only be happy if we’re together… But we’re best friends, and it’s just funny to both of us.

He’s an incredible person; he’s a warm person; he’s the kind of person you can go to and trust. He’s loyal. He’s a great friend; he’s really funny -- one of the funniest people . And he tells the best jokes. I mean, he will tell a story in 10 different accents with the best punch line. Like, it’ll be a 20-minute joke and you’ll be dying laughing -- jokes that I would try and tell, and could never pull off! He’s just incredible that way. And he’s just a lovely human being.

~*~

“I’m very blessed to do what I do, and I work really hard at it. In fact, I think I work too hard at it [laughing]. I think that I should calm it down a little and take some time off, but it’s a good feeling when you can feel there’s a real strong foundation and the ball is rolling on its own, and you don’t have to hype yourself around and do anything other than the jobs, which is really what I [like]. I can’t lie. If I could just stick to the acting and not have to do press, I’d be more than happy, because I’m an actor. I find it hard to do both. Like, I’m in the middle of a film right now and already struggling to get through that film. It’s great, I love it, but it’s hard work. And then suddenly you have to come and do 250 interviews about a film… I’ll finish here and go straight back and start working at 5 on Tuesday morning.”

~*~

"I don't see any of it as lost time. I honestly think if I'd left school and went straight into acting I wouldn't have been successful. I know there's a reason for everything -- I really believe that."

~*~

"It was so cute," Swank says. "He was really nervous leading up to his strip-tease. The script didn't have specifically written moves. So it was just Gerard doing this G-rated strip-tease, making it funny. Take after take, we laughed so hard."

~*~

She says Butler was actually mortified when she had to get stitches and take a week off work. "He cried when it happened," Swank says. "Then he sent me chocolates and flowers. He found out I love waffles and sent me a waffle maker."

Now that's romantic.

~*~

SCOTS actor Gerard Butler admits he fell asleep trying to master the guitar for his new role in film P.S. I Love You.

He said: "I practised and practised and practised, and the fellow who was teaching me kept saying, 'Just make it simple, just go with two or three notes,' but I wanted to get every note in the song. I just wouldn't give it up, and I would just play all the time. I remember standing in front of the mirror one night, and I found myself collapsing. I did it three times, I'm like asleep, and then I thought, 'I should go to bed'."

~*~

"She had four stitches. It was maybe my worst day as an actor. I can laugh now because she laughs at it and quite enjoys telling people the story but, at the time, it was an accident. I'd been doing this scene for a day and a half, stripping and dancing and then pretending that the suspender hits me in the eye. It got stuck behind me and flew over my head and hit her in the head. Within five minutes she'd been taken to the hospital and the whole set goes, 'That's a wrap!' and I'm sitting on the bed on my own. I have to say I bust my balls in that scene making a fool of myself and dancing around a bunch of guys. At the end of that all the thanks I got was that I now scarred Hilary Swank and the production got shut down for five days."

~*~

"He's so fresh and humbled -- he got such a late start in the business that he's not jaded in any way," Swank said. "It's so beautiful to be around that and someone who has that sense of wonder."

~*~

"We laughed so hard during the striptease scene," she says. "Gerry was so funny because he was so nervous and wanted it to be funny but was afraid it wouldn't be. But when that suspender swung across the room and hit my head it hurt so badly. I was laughing and crying at the same time because I couldn't figure out what happened.”

~*~

Standing 6 feet 2 and with a scruffy look, Butler is not the pretty-boy type, although he's suddenly mobbed by women and made People magazine's "sexiest" list. At 38, he remains a bachelor.

"The ladies are really quite nice and, most of the time, polite. I have no idea what to say to them. It's all new to me."

~*~

"When I was making '300,' someone wondered if all that shouting wouldn't harm my singing voice. I told them I didn't have a singing voice, that I was primarily an actor."

~*~

"I was broke. I mean I had NO money. I had to borrow to get the plane fare from London to California, and everyone told me I'd get nowhere - particularly because I have this thick Scottish accent.

"But in two weeks, I got offered the title role in the television movie 'Attila' and, right after that, a new version of 'Dracula,' directed by Wes Craven" ("Dracula 2000").

~*~

Butler would like to get some time off but said he wanted to get in as much work as possible, remembering the times he had little or none. In spite of all the bluster of some of his characters, Butler is relentlessly unsure of the future.

"I'm the kind of guy who, if everything is going great, I'll find things that might go wrong. I think defensively - trying to stop things before they happen."

~*~

"The scene's a real mixture because on the one hand we had great chemistry together, and a lot of things fell into place immediately, and I was amazed at how we played off each other," Butler recalls. "But on the other side of that, this has to be one of the longest opening scenes in a modern movie."

~*~

Butler says that in an age when the average scene in a movie lasts two minutes, he and Swank had to work hard to justify the length of this sequence -- to try and keep it going "with actions and movement and emotion and mood and tempo, to allow it to be that long without getting bored. And then to do that and still keep it natural and keep that spark and chemistry . . . that was a challenge."

Swank and Butler had three days of rehearsal with LaGravenese before the cameras even started rolling. They also spent a lot of time in the apartment set being used for the scene. "We outlined everywhere we wanted to go and at what time, so we could be really quick with it and not waste time on the set," Swank says. "It was to conserve all our hours, because hours are money. So we went in on our weekends and off-times to make sure we got that scene right, because it's such an integral part of the movie."

~*~

Swank considers herself lucky to have Butler as her co-star.

"Isn't he great? He's a great and wonderful guy and we really hit it off. You know, I consider him a friend."

She says that because Butler started into the acting business late, he brings an unusual freshness to his roles.

"He doesn't have any preconceived ideas about how it should work, so he's really playful. He's kind of a kid in that way. He has a lot of wonder -- and that's essentially what acting is."

She knows that audiences who see the movie will love Butler's performance.

"If you didn't love Gerry, if you didn't love him in this movie, you wouldn't go on the journey with my character. So to fall in love with him that deeply in the first 15 minutes of the movie really says a lot about him."

~*~

Scottish actor GERARD BUTLER has laughed off his status as a Hollywood sex symbol, insisting the title is "meaningless". The 300 star admits he is flattered by the throngs of women who lavish compliments on him - but refuses to get carried away with his hunk tag. He says, "You'd rather have somebody say you were sexy than you weren't sexy and that you were good looking rather than you were ugly. "But at the same time, and I can say this from the heart, I don't get too caught up in any of that."

~*~

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