Gerard Butler Quotes (44 Quotes)

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I felt like retiring after The Phantom.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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 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.

and demanding that he do more to intercede with these children.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

We will make a decision tomorrow.

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.

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.