Gerard James Butler (born 13 November 1969) is a Scottish actor, producer, and singer.
I felt that let's understand that all these people are just human, even the advisors in the White House, they're just real people trying to make real decisions and they make mistakes like anybody else does under pressure. If you can get that with these great performances then you claim it on that level as well.
I went from somebody who didn't sing to somebody who didn't speak.
I was born in Glasgow. But my family is pretty much from a little town called Paisley, famous for its cotton mills and paisley pattern.
Generally I don't like doing remakes, but I think that's more in the cynical world of Hollywood where normally remakes are purely for commercial reasons.
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.
Be the hero of your own life story.
Lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten.
Theres a great sense of achievement, testosterone, fun, being able to live out your masculinity when you play an action role or an action-adventure or a real tough-guy role.
The Scots will do anything to beat the English or just to see them lose, but I've never bought into that really.
One thing I've learned as an actor as well as a producer is to trust my own instinct. When I first started acting I would sometimes have ideas about certain things, whether it's a scene, or a character or certain dialogue, that wouldn't be followed. I was never in a position to have the power to press the matter. Sometimes it wasn't even about my character. But I'd watch the movie afterwards and think I was right.
I appreciate and love women for many reasons, tall and small, plump and skinny, and crazy and demure. I see beauty in all of them.
Of course when you spend four hours in prosthetic makeup and you really are looking at yourself and you see how revolting you've become in a way, it obviously adds another strand and helps you. . . a little bit more.
I think the American justice system has a lot more issues than the European justice system, especially the Scottish justice system. We have a really nice mix of European codified law and the traditional English system of common law, which is what the American system is based on.
I know I have within myself. . . a side of solitude. I think people who know me can see, but people who just meet me can't because I'm generally very fun and gregarious. I love to spend a lot of time on my own. I can seriously go into my own head and often love to let myself travel where I don't know where I'm going. I always felt that that was his kind of form of escape, in a way.
I started singing for The Phantom in January, and we started filming in October and I sang all the way through to the next June. In fact, I was singing for about two months before I even knew I had the role.
I had to go and sing with the musical director of the film, Simon Lee, who is just incredible, and it went great. I sang with him about five things, things we'd worked on. And then I went to sing for Andrew Lloyd Weber.
I do get stressed at times, but I love what I do as an actor. This is the part that I don't like. I don't actually like talking about - I wish I could just go and get on with my job, because I love getting a script, breaking it down, working with other people, bonding with other people, fighting with other people, and out of those arguments, creating something that nobody expected and seeing it all come together. Telling a story, having an impact on people's lives, moving them and making them laugh.
So many actors get caught up in their technique, and to be honest, I see it really getting in the way. I see them forcing things. I definitely do my best work when I'm free of that. But I think as an actor, I work really hard in preparing the roles. I spend like 90 percent of my waking moments walking around thinking: "What does this character do? What is his relationship with so-and-so?" Always, really. Too much!
I sang in a rock band when I was training as a lawyer. You know, not professional, we just did it for fun. We just did gigs all over Edinburgh and some in Glasgow and some at festivals.
When I went to Scotland to do another movie, I would sing with a coach up there and then when I went to New York I sang with a coach over there-I mean I've now sung with coaches in LA, New York, London, Glasgow, St Louis and Rio de Janeiro!