Gerard Butler Quotations

I love a girl with a good sense of humour, who is confident but who has a sweetness to her - that melts my heart.

I had to get used to wearing a mask and wearing a prosthetic and performing with those things while singing and expressing myself through stylized movement, while keeping it as human as possible so the audience could be closer to the horror of the Phantom.

It was always a dream as I was growing up. I would watch movies, mostly American movies, and be so engrossed in those stories, all I wanted to do was be there. I wanted to be part of that romance or that fantasy or be that warrior or that struggling soul who finally makes it good.

I've had broken bones and cuts and dashes and tears from movies, but when I was five, my mom put the biscuits up high so we wouldn't be helping ourselves. So, one day I asked to stand up on a chair to get a biscuit, and it fell, and the corner of the chair went right into the side of my eye, and it made a big hole in there.

There's 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.

To me, it's always good to retain a sense of wonder and never good too big for life, like you've seen it all before.

I had to prove myself to a lot of different people.

It's always more interesting to make a movie about what is relevant in your society. What's the political global backdrop? What are our threats? What are we vulnerable to? Because that's what an audience vibes on - that is what people are interested in, universally.

In Scotland, I'm just like a lot of other guys, but in America, I'm seen as a very strong, masculine guy.

I love doing the stunts. It's as simple as that.

I remember when 'Grease' came out, I used to force my mum to try and grease my hair back, and it was never long enough, and literally I'd be screaming at her, 'Do it. Just do it!'.

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.

I was training to be a lawyer... I was president of the law society at Glasgow University, and my bass guitarist was my secretary of my law society; the lead guitarist and writer worked at the law firm that I worked.

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 went from somebody who didn't sing to somebody who didn't speak.

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 wear a lot of Brioni and Ferragamo and Dolce, all of those kind of things.

Choosing the right mask helps you... We went through many masks. It was very particular leather that as soon as you smudged it, you had to get a new one. We went through about 55 masks.

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.

The chance to be both artistically appreciated and commercially appreciated... That's what you hope for.

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.

As long as you do the best work that you can and not make it bland... because you're going down a lane that is trying to make everybody happy. You have to take an angle on these things.

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.

Angelina came up, and as soon as we said hello, I thought, This is going to be great. I'm really going to love doing this with her. And I did. And then I was very excited to do the movie after that.

By that point, I had started taking singing lessons. And after the first session, I mean, I was surprised that the windows didn't shatter. And after the third session, I really didn't know where this voice had come from.

Manscaping and all of that is not my thing. I'm more of the Clint Eastwood kind of guy.

When I'm 80 and sagging all over, I can tell my grandkids, 'Look, when I was a lad, 'People' magazine thought I was sexy!'

I knew I'd just done one of the most amazing things that I will ever get a chance to do. Just to be part of a musical that's not your background and to pull it off and to think that we've done something that's really special.

The problem with my mind is it sways from side to side. The idea of me fantasizing about becoming an actor quickly led to depression. 'No, it was never going to happen to me.' I was a sixteen-year-old kid on the other side of the world from where they made movies. Scottish actors never really got play. There was Sean Connery, and that was it.

Ever since I was a child, I have loved being the centre of attention, but similarly, I can't remember a time in my life that I haven't battled with all sorts of quandaries, fears and weaknesses.

The Phantom, as well as being backed up by that music, it just so was a role that I identified with so powerfully. From the first second that I walked on to perform.

I go to Scotland maybe three times a year, and I love it. When I'm at home, I feel at home, I feel myself, I feel connected.

I have literally run into 20 people all around the world with my face tattooed on them.

Funnily enough, when I originally went in for my screen test, that set was already built.

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.

My manager and my agents, they go over my contracts.

My overwhelming memory of being a child is the huge amount of love I felt for my mum. She was my everything, because she was both my mum and my dad.

I wasn't going to be an actor. I was going to be a lawyer. I came from a family just above working class, just below middle class, a great family of wonderful values. The idea of me having a chance for a law degree was enticing. Enticing to me but also very enticing to my family.

I was amazed and upset by the looks I got just walking around the studio... It illuminates the ugliness and the beauty that exists within each of us, and that's what this story represents to me.

Sometimes I finish a movie, and I get used to a certain lifestyle, and when that stops, I get a bit lost for about a week. 'No one is bringing me lunch anymore - I've got to go do that myself?' I lose the main point of my focus.

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 did spend a lot of my childhood playing out movie scenarios in my head. I'd walk along the road, pretending like I was in the army, talking on the radio, and doing maneuvers. I dreamt a lot about performing in movies and living in fantasies.

I see a lot of actors for whom life becomes one big schedule. I guess I try to be more sensitive to my private life - to take a breath of fresh air and be in the countryside or on a golf course.

My problem is, whether it's for emotion or for the talents that a character has to have in a role, I find it very difficult to not take on a challenge. For instance, 'Phantom Of The Opera,' in truth, scared the crap out of me, but I wasn't going to walk away and say, 'I didn't do that because I didn't believe in myself.'

When I was a vocalist, a lead singer in a rock band, I was a law student at the time. It wasn't a professional rock band, it was for fun. I was already way out of that by the time Phantom came along. Having to learn to sing, it was such duress, having to really try and get to such a quality.

The poem is much more about pure good versus pure evil. Whereas the movie, Beowulf goes to take on this troll who they all perceive as a demon and filthy and ignorant and sadistic, only to discover that that's not actually the case.

Whats interesting is, the very reasons that some people like your performance are the exact things that other people feel made your performance bad.

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?

If you abandoned yourself to that world and that character and that period surrounded by extras in the same period clothing and costumes and listening to that music all the time, you give in and you let that music become a part of your soul. Then you can live it and breathe it, which is really what I was trying to do.

He will dictate if we go at the weekend and where we go,

He goes on the dirt at home and he has raced on the dirt in Dubai, so he knows it,

I support the Celtic football team, which was in the semi-final for the European cup, and it was the first time they've been in for many years. I went to the game the night before in Glasgow with all my crazy Glaswegian friends who screamed at the top of their lungs the whole night, and I had to sit there and clap to protect my voice because I was singing for Andrew Lloyd Webber the next day in London.

I was getting to bed about 10 P.M. so wound up and not getting to sleep by 11, and because I was putting the prosthetics on for five hours, I had to be up at 3 in the morning.

I'm sure, at the end, you can never keep everybody happy, especially the Scots-I hate to say this-if you're dealing with one of their national heroes. No matter what way you do it, there's no way you'll keep everybody happy. So I'll expect some praise, and I'm sure I'll get a lot of abuse.

Well, at the end of the day it's about beating England!

At the end of the day what matters is that you do your best in every job you do. But of course you would rather your movie does well. You want it to be as critically well-received as possible, and you want it to do as well with the public as possible, because it means that they're getting what you're doing, or what you're trying to say, or appreciating your work.

Angelina had wanted a stronger male character to play opposite her, and I think one of the other advantages in that was a sense of competition.

I used the physical deformity to a certain extent by conducting research into physical deformities, but I used a more internal thing. I think the physical deformity represented emotional deformities; things inside ourselves which don't allow us fully to be open to love or to be loved. It was more the effect of that deformity that I was focusing on, and it was more of an interior journey into my own dark spaces.

There was certainly a beautiful buzz going on last year, and now it feels like, as you say, we're having to kind of get that momentum going again.

I had never done that before-singing while trying to give a cinematic performance. The temptation is to open your mouth and belt it out and do something theatrical, which would just be ghastly because every time you open your mouth it's 30 feet wide on a big screen.

If you just tell the story of what the story's about, then it sparks curiosity, but I think it also arouses suspicion, as you say, that it could be overly sentimental. But it so isn't. And I think it was all about doing the inner work and then underplaying everything.

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.

The truth is never pretty.

To me, all those jobs I did [roles] have been amazing experiences for one reason or another. I got paid 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.

[How to train your dragon] is beautiful to look at and, again, those values that it contains about relationships, friendships, and bonding in the face of ignorance.

I mean, I made The Phantom, although The Phantom was, believe it or not, an independent film. It was just a very large, expensive independent film.

The Scots will do anything to beat the English or just to see them lose, but I've never bought into that really.

On Phantom... I listened to the music while I was reading the script. And it had just blown me away. I really... I was so excited about it. It's been a long time since I really got so excited about something.

At first it was a bit strange and daunting to have to wear a mask, but afterwards I came to enjoy it. In warm conditions, though, it started to slip off my face. Other times they used this double-sided sticky tape, and I literally couldn't get it off my face. I would feel like I was ripping my face off and I had a lot of cuts and bruises because of it-huge red marks. People might think it was method acting.

When I'm making a movie, it's making use of my creative juices, and it fills me up with what really is - I think my purpose here is to tell stories.

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.

Sometimes along the way in my life I don't want a smart woman right now, I want a dumb woman. But then you think, 'That doesn't work, now I want a smart woman.' Then you get a smart woman and you go, 'No, that doesn't work.' So it's just killing me right now.

In actual fact, I wanted to be an actor, but I was a lawyer, and I was a week away from qualifying and was fired. And that's the day I made an announcement: "Hey, for seven years, you thought I was going to be a lawyer. Well, I'm not. I've just lost my job, and I'm packing my bags and moving to London tomorrow to be an actor."

Whenever I watched this movie ["How to Train Your Dragon"], I thought, "That's where I want to be. I want to be up in that sky. I want to be flying through the clouds and be living in that environment." So I think if I had a dragon, I would spend most of my time up in the air all over the place and taking in this beautiful planet.

Iceland is 50 percent Celtic blood, from the females that they stole from us, which is why our country has only got dogs left. It was a joke! I'll never be let back in Scotland again!

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.

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.

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.

My Range Rover is great for LA. You can take surfboards on it and stick some bikes in the back. And if you kidnap people you could tie them up in the back, there's space for your chloroform...

I love to do films of all shapes and sizes and feelings and genres. So for me to go from Tomb Raider straight into Dear Frankie, there's nothing that excites me more than to keep mixing it up.

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!

I'm very down-to-earth. I think I'm still 'street'.

Wilbur brought the vision and Rodney executed it.

If you just tell the story of what the storys about, then it sparks curiosity, but I think it also arouses suspicion, as you say, that it could be overly sentimental. But it so isnt. And I think it was all about doing the inner work and then underplaying everything.

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.

When I was 12, I was in Oliver! at a theater in Glasgow.

In Scotland I'm just like a lot of other guys, but in America I'm seen as a very strong, masculine guy.

I spent many years not knowing where my dad was... Not knowing if my dad was alive, even. He turned up when I was 16 out of the blue.

I think I get laid less now than I used to, because I’m way more paranoid now.

Up in the north of Scotland, a lot of the villages are completely Viking names. A lot of Vikings came down and settled in Scotland and in Ireland. And a lot of them didn't, but they took plenty of us with them - mostly the chicks.

Be the hero of your own life story.

Lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten.

I have a level of fear going into every project, and that's what keeps me going.

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.

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?

The thing about courage is it’s something that we have to learn and relearn our whole lives. It’s not just in you, it’s in every choice we make every day.

I think some parts of the American justice system have gone haywire.

The fact that you touched somebody's soul or made them laugh-that's a wonderful thing.

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.

You know that every bead of sweat falling off your head, every weight you've pumped - the history of that is all in your eyes,