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Åùå îäíî.
By Thomas Chau in New York City
Scottish actor Gerard Butler walks into the NYC press room with the kind sense of humor you’d imagine coming from a jolly ol’ Scot. And after all, he’s got plenty to be pleased about.
With two major action films opening this year, including Richard Donner’s “Timeline” and “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life,” Butler finds himself more busy than ever. He also is shooting a true-life soccer film in Saint Louis, Missouri, and is prepping for his role as The Phantom in Joel Schumacher’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”
In Jan de Bont's "Tomb Radier: The Cradle of Life," he plays Terry Sheridan, a rogue former British agent who is enlisted by Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) to protect the Cradle of Life from a madman named Dr. Jonathan Reiss. Reiss is seeking to discover the location of the Cradle of Life, which is home to Pandora’s Box; a mythological legend which unleashes pain and fury to the world once its open.
Butler graciously sat down in NYC for a roundtable discussion and entertained reporters with several jokes here and there.
Jan told us he shot four endings for the movie…are you in some of the other endings?
I’m in every ending. (Laughter erupts) Otherwise, the movie wouldn’t make sense! (More laughter)
Was bulking up for the movie a physical manifestation of your character or was it a chore to sort of get to that?
It was both because I often think that the technical training and the physical training you have to do for parts takes you along the way towards establishing the character. I think often, the guys who train you are in the kind of field you’re pretending to play in. I’m doing a soccer movie right now and I have a goal-keeping coach and he’s insane. He stands next to me, and is like, (in a gruff voice) “It’s your box! It’s your box!” and I’m looking at him like, “Alright now, calm down.” But I was already baked for the movie. I did “Timeline” and I got pumped up a lot for that. But for this, I had to do a lot of boxing and kickboxing.
What about your love scene with Angelina? Was it pre-choreographed?
If you’ve seen the scene, then you [only] see part of it because part of it is this kind of fighting involved, and slapping my wrist. You got to choreograph that, otherwise, you got nothing but a broken wrist. But then, there’s part of the scene where it’s like “Just let it go, go for it. Release your passions,” which we were building up for a long time, in terms of our characters. It’s a very hot, passionate, steamy scene.
These films are very action-oriented. How hard is it for you to read the script and then visualize what the words are describing?
I think one of the things you learn, as an actor, in terms of a studio movie where someone is a master like Jan. He really has an incredible look. [Working] with Jan is to realize, “I don’t know shit.” Whatever way I think a scene might be, it’s very liable to be very, very different. I can just focus on my personality. I can throw whatever ideas about how something might look good, but it’s definitely coming from my personally. Even having worked on that movie for seven months, there were so many things that surprised me when I watched it. I didn’t realize those locations were going to be captured like that. I really thought he took such great advantage of those locations.
Would you say that Scottish actors have become hotter properties in recent years?
Yeah, they are and I think there are a lot of reasons for that. Some people would say that Scottish actors are “en vogue” at the moment. I think that’s crap because half the time, they have to do other accents. Why would you say, “Let’s take this guy because he’s Scottish!” I’m sure, at the end of the day, a studio here would rather put an American in a role if they could. It’s more of a gamble to put somebody who’s Scottish. But also, accents are interesting and the world is becoming a smaller place in terms of that and I think the Americans are far more broad-minded than the British. It’s tough for an American to star in a British movie unless they’re a huge star. America is much more the land of the opportunity. And also, I think a lot of great actors have come out of there to prove their worth: Ewan McGregor, Alan Cumming, Robert Carlyle, Ian Bannon, Sean Connery, Brian Cox. You still have to fight for the job, I don’t think you get it just because your country is “en vogue.”
“Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life” opens in theaters July 25th.
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