Gerard Butler Quotes

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.

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.

Lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten.

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.

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.

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

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.

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. I need to say, "Okay, enough, take the easy road." But the easy road for me is not - it might just come out coincidentally. I wouldn't ever choose a movie because it's easy. I might choose a movie because I feel like being funny, or I feel like being able to do something that is perhaps dramatic, but to a lesser degree. Because I like switching it up, basically, not because I would take the easier road.

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

Be the hero of your own life story.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

Comedy is actually very hard. It's hard to choose those moments and know when you can really push it, and know when you should be bringing it back and making it more subtle, and knowing as time goes on, as you do take after take and the crowd around you stops laughing. Whenever you do comedy, you realize you're up against - you're performing next to people who you would think are so unbelievably good at it, that that's a bit of a pressure. But at the same time, it's just fun. It's fun to be able to let out that side of you.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

The truth is never pretty.

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

It's so incredible when you meet somebody who comes up and passionately tells you how much they liked you in a movie, or how much they liked thamovie. That's a great thing, because I know what I get out of watching a great movie. So I love what I do, but it's more - I don't think there'd be anybody who would tell you that, even if it's something they love doing, they don't get stressed out by it. I'm a very intense person, so I go very intensely and passionately into what I do.

Wilbur brought the vision and Rodney executed it.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.