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 | Gerard butler News - 17-December-2007 |  |
 ONE HOT SCOT
January 2008 Issue - Glamour Magazine UK
(text taken from magazine scan)
Move over McGregor and McAvoy, it’s time for another irresistibly accented Celt to take Hollywood by storm …
Gerard Butler is breathing heavily. Remarkably heavily. “I am a heavy breather,” he announces, saucily. “I might sound like I’m about to drop dead but I’m fine, I haven’t had a cigarette for six months! You should hear me when I’m really out of breath …”
Hollywood’s latest leading man is out on a 10am hike through the mountains of Albuquerque, New Mexico training for a forthcoming role, in Sci Fi thriller “Game”, and he’s so busy he’s talking to GLAMOUR as he walks. “I’m training whenever I can, getting in amazing shape for this role …”
This is his moment. The genial, gorgeous, garrulous Glaswegian, renowned for his bulging biceps in 2007’s colossally successful ancient Greek drama “300”, he appears in three more films in 2008; “Nim’s Island”, “RocknRolla” and a gangster drama, “The Untouchables: Capone Rising”.
This month, meanwhile, comes his most romantic role to date, “PS I Love You” based on Irish writer Cecelia Ahern’s novel, an unapologetically sentimental love story where the recently widowed Holly (Hilary Swank), receives mysterious notes from her late husband Gerry (Butler) a preposterously attractive, all singing, all giggling Irishman. “Someone told me when they saw it the girl in front had mascara all over the place” cackles Gerard. “So it’s incredibly romantic and hopeful, and I like a tearjerker, I’m a bit of a girl that way”.
But he’s not that much of a girl. In fact, Gerard Butler is a 38 year old checklist of everything we might want in a man; funny, clever, talented, passionate, gracious, thoughtful, charming, athlete fit, 6ft 2in, swarthy handsome with dark hair and olive green eyes. Has being this much of a cartoon ’hunk’ ever hindered his career? “It holds you back in Britain more than the US,” he decides, pounding along. “in Britain if you look like a cross between a pig and a packet of biscuits you’re most likely to get a job. But most of the *beep* up women I know are the beautiful ones. Often being good looking causes you to think about being good looking a little too much … Hey listen to this … [the sound of tiny grunts through rapid panting] did you hear that? That’s my little pug, Lolita, She’s exhausted!”
Lolita, it turns out, is currently the only love of Gerard’s life. Is she the nearest he’s come, so far, to commitment? “Yes” he chuckles “I’ve actually asked her to marry me. No reply yet. I’m waiting patiently. She’s a grunter, I like grunters.”
Gerard wasn’t always the dream catch. A self confessed ’bad boy’ he joined the Scottish Youth Theatre aged 12, then abandoned his acting dreams for law. He became president of the law society at Glasgow University, while fronting Speed, a student rock band of trainee lawyer chums. Post University, be briefly moved to LA, secured an extra part in the 90s smash hit “The BodyGuard” then returned home when his Dad was diagnosed with cancer. It was here, while training as a solicitor with a top Edinburgh law firm, that “things started going downhill”. Drink, drugs, women and eventually depression. Now teetotal and a spiritual scholar, he reveals, “someone once said to me, you could just as easily be a tramp sleeping on a park bench as in a penthouse in New York city. I totally got that. If you’re not fulfilling your purpose in life, it’s really dampening the fire of the soul. You think ‘well, is this it? I came onto this planet to do something that makes me really unhappy?’ And I find I am really good at making myself unhappy. For me, it takes a lot of work and effort to be happy.”
Gerard was fired for unreliable behaviour, told by his firm they were doing him “a favour” and the next morning he moved to London, to become an actor.
He cites losing his Dad in his early twenties as having a profound impact. “It certainly brought home a reality about morality.” he decides. “When he died I was in a very destructive phase in my life. At that point I was living in LA, where there’s not such a sense of community. I knew a couple of people there who committed suicide. One girl I knew in an apartment block jumped off the top of the building and there was nobody around to clean up the mess. These people had come from other parts and lost touch with their families. It reminds you. When I think of where I’ve been emotionally and psychologically to where I am now; the opportunities I’ve been given … I’ve so much gratitude.”
Starting with small parts in “Mrs Brown” and “Tomorrow Never Dies”, Gerard has graduated over the past ten years to starring roles in “Dracula”, “Tomb Raider” and “The Phantom of the Opera”. And there’s been no time for long term romance.
“Just too busy.” he chirps. “I’m starting to give up on all that. I go from one location to another and even if you meet somebody nice, you know you’re about to fly to the other side of the world. And I’m over long distance phone calls!” He says he hasn’t given up hope on “the beauty of love and family” and adds, “I grew up with Scottish girls whoa re so full of personality, they’ll sit down and have a beer and swear and tell jokes. I like a girl who can be one of the guys. And sexy as well. And who can rip the *beep* out of you or your friends. Aye.”
Today, he gets his kicks from “a good run - better than any antidepressant” and admits he’s glad his bad boy antics never made the tabloids. “I am quite open about myself but I’ve also managed to stay quite private because I haven’t whored myself about” he notes “I partied a lot in my time: it didn’t make me happy. There’s a lot of emptiness and game playing. I’d rather be at home, hanging out with my mates, in the pool, going for a walk.”
What does he want, in the end, from all this? “well, there’s a selfishness to it,” he decides, “I wanna do well. I wanna make great films. I wanna have a sense of achievement. Have people laugh so much they’re hanging off their seat with saliva coming out of their mouths! Tell a story that passes on. And have a nice house. I think it was Michelangelo who said ‘the worst possibility about dreaming too low, or not high enough, is you might reach it.’ You get there and think ‘well, ok, I got there - is this it? So set your dreams high!” | Page: 1 2 Next
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