Gerald Butler is a Scottish actor best known for his role as King Leonidas in the film adaptation of Frank Miller's 300 (2007). Butler gave up a legal career to pursue acting, and made his movie debut in 1997's Mrs. Brown (starring Judi Dench). Within two years he was a leading man, playing Attila the Hun on TV (2001) and Dracula on the big screen (2000). Roles in Reign of Fire (2002, with Christian Bale) and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003, starring Angelina Jolie) led to a higher profile, and in 2004 Butler played the title character in the movie musical The Phantom of the Opera (co-starring Emmy Rossum). The success of 300 showed Butler at his manliest and most heroic, and P.S. I Love You, a romance tale with Hilary Swank released the same year, showed Butler's soft, sensitive side. By 2008 he was a Hollywood movie star with firm U.K. roots, alternating between romance and action movies. His films include Nim's Island (2008, with Jodie Foster), Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla (2008), The Ugly Truth (2009, with Katherine Heigl) and Law Abiding Citizen (2009, with Jamie Foxx).
Gerard Butler was awarded a Certificate of Bravery by the Royal Humane Society of Scotland in 1997 for saving a boy from drowning in the River Tay... Butler was mentioned in the gossip columns in 2004 and 2005 as a leading contender to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.
Career Highlights: Mrs. Brown, Dear Frankie, RocknRolla
First Major Screen Credit: Mrs. Brown (1997)
Biography
Scottish actor Gerard Butler spent seven miserable years studying law before trying his hand at acting on the London stage. Half a decade later, a much happier Butler had over a dozen theater, movie, and television credits under his belt, including starring roles in the stage version of Trainspotting (1996) and the award-winning film Mrs. Brown (1997).
Born on November 13, 1969, in Glasgow, Butler is the youngest of Margaret and Edward Butler's three children; he has a sister and a brother. When Butler was barely six months old, his family relocated to Montréal, Canada, where his father undertook several failed business ventures. A year and a half later, Butler's parents divorced, and his mother took the children back to Scotland. He saw his father once more when he was four years old, and then not again until he was 16. In the meantime, Butler grew up in his mother's hometown of Paisley, where he frequented a nearby movie theater. Enamored with acting, he convinced his mother to take him to auditions, eventually joining the Scottish Youth Theatre and playing a street urchin in Oliver! at the Kings Theatre in Glasgow. An exceptional student, Butler graduated at the top of his class. Hoping to please his family and his teachers, who felt acting was an unrealistic career choice, Butler enrolled in Glasgow University's law program. He served as the president of the school's law society and earned an honor's degree.
After finishing college, Butler took a year and a half off to live in Los Angeles, where he appeared as an extra in the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston vehicle The Bodyguard (1992). He then traveled to Canada to be at his father's bedside as he succumbed to cancer. Shortly after his father's death, Butler returned to Scotland to begin a two-year law traineeship in Edinburgh at one of the country's top firms. But he was bored and discontented as a lawyer, and still dreamed about performing. He went to see Trainspotting on-stage at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and knew he had made the wrong career choice. Soon enough, Butler's unhappiness began to show in his work, and his firm fired him with only a week left in his training. Two days later, at age 25, he moved to London to begin his acting career. Butler took on a series of odd jobs -- from waiting tables to demonstrating clockwork toys at a trade show -- while looking for work as an actor. He was supposed to be serving as a casting assistant for the play Coriolanus at the Mermaid Theatre when he ran into the show's director, actor Steven Berkoff, at a coffee bar and asked to read for a part. Impressed with the ex-barrister's moxie, Berkoff agreed and Butler secured his first professional acting role. While rehearsing for Coriolanus, he accompanied one of the other actors to an audition for the same stage adaptation of Trainspotting he had seen in Edinburgh and landed the lead part of Mark Renton.
In 1997, with his theater career firmly established, Butler made his big-screen debut opposite Billy Connolly and Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown. Sometime later, he had returned to the film's shooting location, Taymouth Castle, for a picnic when he saw a child drowning in the nearby River Tay. Butler dove into the water and saved the boy. The actor received a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society for his selfless act. That same year, he earned a small speaking part as a bad guy in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies before spoofing ex-Wet Wet Wet singer Marti Pellow for the 1998 series The Young Person's Guide to Becoming a Rock Star. Butler finished out the '90s by appearing in the television comedy Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, as well as returning to the stage to appear opposite Sheila Gish and Rachel Weisz in Suddenly, Last Summer in London's West End.
Butler began the new millennium with supporting parts in the gangster film Shooters (2000) and the war drama Harrison's Flowers (2000). He then simultaneously landed the high-profile title roles in Wes Craven's Dracula 2000 (2000) and the USA television movie Attila (2001). Produced by the creators of The Mummy franchise, Attila chronicled the life of the eponymous fifth century barbarian and co-starred veteran actors Tim Curry and Powers Boothe. It also re-teamed Butler with his Coriolanus director, Berkoff, who played his uncle in the film. The hype that surrounded both Dracula 2000 and Attila was fueled by CNN's announcement that Butler was the frontrunner to replace Pierce Brosnan as the next James Bond. The following months, however, were anticlimactic for Butler. Dracula 2000 bombed at the box office and Attila, though one of the year's highest-rated television miniseries, proved to be forgettable. The rumors surrounding his involvement with 007 were quickly quelled when Brosnan announced that he was staying on for at least two more Bond films, and the series' producers never contacted Butler.
Determined to get back on his feet, Butler signed on with a new agency. He returned to British television for ITV's miniseries The Jury (2002), which also featured Derek Jacobi and Antony Sher, while simultaneously filming a role as Christian Bale's dragon-slaying best friend in the special-effects spectacle Reign of Fire (2002). He then quickly landed a supporting role in Renny Harlin's Mindhunters with Val Kilmer and LL Cool J, but pulled out of the project to play the lead in Richard Donner's long-awaited adaptation of Michael Crichton's best-selling novel Timeline (2003). Butler also turned heads as Angelina Jolie's hunky love interest in the sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life that same year.
Though, to this point in his career, Butler had no doubt displayed immense talent as an actor, the films he had appeared in had almost consistently disappointed in terms of box-office returns. In 2004, that disheartening trend continued as Butler donned the famous mask of the disfigured musical genius made popular on the stage by actor Michael Crawford in the big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, with subsequent roles in The Game of Their Lives and Beowulf & Grendel doing little to increase his international recognizability. By 2006, it seemed that Butler was finally poised to break big, and as he prepared to lead the soldiers of Sparta in battle against the overwhelming forces of the Persian Empire in Dawn of the Dead director Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's popular graphic novel 300, it appeared as if he was determined to do so in style. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide
Butler was born in Scotland, the son of Margaret and Edward Butler, a bookie.[1][2] Butler was raised in a Roman Catholic working-class family[3] and for the first two years of his life, lived in Montreal, Quebec.[4] When his parents divorced, he returned to Scotland with his mother and siblings. Butler had no further contact with his father until he was 16 years old. Butler attended the Scottish Youth Theatre.
Career
Butler graduated from the School of Law at Glasgow University with an Honours degree in Law.[5] While at University he became President of the University Law Society.[5] After graduating he briefly worked as a trainee at a legal firm in Edinburgh but was sacked a week before he would have qualified.[5]
Butler then embarked a career in acting with his early work being on the stage in Scotland. His first roles were in Coriolanus and in the stage version of Trainspotting.[6] Butler landed his first film role as Archie Brown in 1997's Mrs. Brown alongside Judi Dench and Billy Connolly. That same year, he appeared in a minor role in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (though his appearance was cut). He followed this with several appearances in various independent films and several television series in the UK, including a role in the series Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married and the films The Cherry Orchard, One More Kiss, and Harrison's Flowers.
In 2005, he starred in The Game of Their Lives, a film based on a true story of the 1950 U.S. association football team who beat England 1 - 0 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The same year he was cast as Beowulf in the Sturla Gunnarsson film production of Beowulf & Grendel. Filmed entirely in Iceland, Beowulf & Grendel was widely released in Canada to moderate success. During filming, Butler also participated in and co-produced the documentary Wrath of Gods. Directed by Jon Gustafsson, the film documents the dramatic circumstances the cast and crew faced while making the film Beowulf & Grendel. Later this same year Butler began production of 300. The film, directed by Zack Snyder and co-starring Lena Headey, was released in March 2007. The film was an adaptation of Frank Miller'sgraphic novelof the same name based on events surrounding the Battle of Thermopylae in Greece circa 480 BC. 300 currently holds the record for the highest opening weekend box office gross in U.S. for the month of March, with takings of over $70 million. By the end of its theatrical run, 300 had a worldwide box office gross of $456 million. Butler received various awards for this role including "Action Star of the Year" at the Taurus World Stunt Awards and "Biggest Ass Kicker" at the 2007 Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards.
Nim's Island, which also stars Jodie Foster and Abigail Breslin, opened in cinemas on 4 April 2008. Butler was cast in the role of Nim's father, Jack, and as Nim's imaginary hero, Alex Rover. The dual role allowed Butler to use his natural Scottish accent when playing Alex, while he adopted an American accent as Jack.[7]
He next appeared in RocknRolla, a gangster film directed by Guy Ritchie, playing a street-smart gangster involved in a lucrative real-estate scheme. This film had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2008 and was released in major North American cities in October 2008.[8]
Butler also performed the voice of The Captain in the Watchmen movie extra, "Tales from the Black Freighter" that was made alongside Zack Snyder's adaptation of Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore's Watchmen. The special was released on both Blu-Ray and DVD on 24 March 2009.
In 2009, Butler co-starred in the battle of the sexes comedy The Ugly Truth with Katherine Heigl.[9] The film was released on 24 July 2009.[10] The film made $27.6 million in its opening weekend and, as of 31 October, has grossed $170,523,885 worldwide. Butler was next seen in Lionsgate's Gamer, a futuristic thriller, co-produced by Paramount Pictures and Relativity Media, which began filming in November 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and was released on 4 September 2009.[11] In the film, Butler played Kable, the No. 1-ranked warrior in the highest-rated game, which is called "Slayers".[12]
Subsequently, Butler co-starred in Law Abiding Citizen with Jamie Foxx,[13] the first project of his production company, Evil Twins. Originally slated for a 26 March 2010 release by Overture Films, the movie was instead released on 16 October 2009 in the United States.[14] The film was directed by F. Gary Gray; shooting began on 21 January 2009 on location in Philadelphia, PA,[10] and wrapped in April 2009. As of 31 October, the film has grossed $44,081,650.
Gerard has joined the cast of Coriolanus, Ralph Fiennes directorial debut, as Tullus Aufidius.[10] Shakespeare's Coriolanus is being adapted by Fiennes in a contemporary setting. Gerard's first professional acting role was in a stage production of Coriolanus at London's Mermaid Theater in 1996.[15] Filming is scheduled to begin in March 2010 in Serbia.
Personal life
Butler currently splits his time between Los Angeles and New York City. He has a pug named Lolita.[citation needed]
Butler was a heavy smoker but quit smoking in 2007 when he played Gerry Kennedy in PS, I Love You. "I was smoking a huge amount and having real bad premonitions and then I got this role where the guy dies of cancer", Butler said. "The film made me contemplate death and realize I was playing Russian roulette with my health. I've stopped smoking since".
Butler's patron charity is Kids Kicking Cancer.[16] He is currently donating his time, set visits, movie premiere tickets and autographed personal items and photographs in an effort to support the charity.[17] He is also a huge fan of Celtic Football Club.
