Post by canadia on Aug 8, 2010 15:29:37 GMT -5
Here is Part 1 of the News of the Worlds 2 part series
Most of it is nothing new to GB fans so nice to know a tabloid is sticking to what seems to be the facts....
The Gerard Butler Story
WE REVEAL STEAMY STORY BEHIND CINEMA'S HOTTEST HUNK
Slideshow 18 photos www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/scottish/scottish_showbiz/article808241.ece?slideshowPopup=true&articleId=808241&initialArticleId=808241
By Scott Hussey, 08/08/2010
MOVIE hunk Gerard Butler is one of Hollywood's most bankable stars - bringing box office success whether he's flexing his muscles in action flicks or making women go weak in rom-com romps.
IN the first of a two-part special, we chart his incredible life, from his humble Paisley beginnings to the wild drunken antics and failed law career that saw him eventually turn to acting... and become one of the world's top stars.
HUNGOVER, unshaven and exhausted from weeks of hard partying, Gerard Butler stood before his legal firm's stuffy senior partners to be asked: "Can you think of a reason why you should NOT be dismissed?"
Even though he had studied law for four years and was just ONE WEEK away from making his mother the proudest woman in Paisley by qualifying as a lawyer, Gerard had no answer.
All he could ponder was a catalogue of incidents from a lost year which had seen him HURL himself at a police car in a drunken stupor; end up SHACKLED with eight other cons in LA; and ROCK an Edinburgh fringe crowd into the small hours as lead singer in a band.
The trainee solicitor had no defence - and was promptly and unceremon- iously fired.
"I became quite infamous in Scottish legal circles. It's very difficult to be fired as a trainee lawyer," he recalls.
"That was the worst day of my life. Now it's the best," he adds.
It was a turning point - the moment Gerard decided to follow his true vocation and head for London to become an actor.
Gerard, now 40, went on to see his name roll on the credits for a string of small and big-screen productions, including Mrs Brown, Lara Croft Tomb Raider and The Phantom of the Opera.
Then, four years ago, he played buff King Leonidas in 300 and Hollywood started to come calling.
He has since starred with a string of big-name leading ladies, including Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You, Jodie Foster in Nim's Island, Katherine Heigl in The Ugly Truth, and Jennifer Aniston in The Bounty Hunter.
And he has had hard-hitting roles with Jamie Foxx in crime thriller Law Abiding Citizen, Gamer and in Guy Ritchie's action flick RocknRolla. Now there are four more films in the pipeline, including Burns, in which Gerard plays Scotland's most revered poet.
Fair to say he won't need to research the bard's bad boy lifestyle too hard. In the year leading up to the termination of his legal career Gerard embarked on a debauched spree of boozing, womanising and wild living.
Aged 22, he took a year off from his legal studies and headed to LA - where he was arrested repeatedly for drunken behaviour.
He says: "This is when things started to go a little crazy.
"Something very compulsive and dark and lusty and pleasurable but damaging took over.
"It was suddenly knowing I could go out and have a life of travelling, craziness, adventure, partying, women, and all the other things that go with that - including a sense of abandonment.
"Being away from home and not having the same kind of discipline and structure in front of me meant I could do whatever the f*** I wanted, and I did.
"For a while, I was living in an apartment in Venice Beach with three Irish guys who drank every day. It was perfect - we just got smashed. I started getting odd jobs. My buddies turned up one day and said they'd gotten a job working in a carnival that was going around the state fairs in California. In this year out of school, I did many things.
"I drove from LA to Miami, from LA to Chicago, from Miami to Chicago. And I kept getting arrested for stupid stuff, basically just being too drunk.
"I was out of control, and justifying it with this idea that I'm young, this is life - this is me just being boisterous."
He goes on: "I remember getting arrested once and they actually put me in shackles.
"I was walking around chained to eight other guys - and technically, I was still president of the Law Society in Glasgow.
"I ended up in LA County Jail. I was in a cell with my 501s and my tight leather jacket and my long hair thinking I was Jim Morrison."
He had been arrested for trying to jump on to a police car.
"They had already told me to move on because I was running about and being crazy.
Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston
"Then the next minute, I saw these lights coming towards me. I used to be crazy when I was drunk and I ran full-speed at the car. It was driving towards me and I was about to jump on to it, and the light started flashing."
He believes the incident perfectly illustrates why he is so hot as an actor. "The reason so many Scottish actors have done so well is that we have a lot of passion and sensitivity - and insanity, as well.
"We have a lot more going on, to be honest, than what your average American experiences in his life, and therefore we have more to say in cinematic terms."
Gerard was moulded by his upbringing in Paisley.
His bookmaker father Edward fled to Canada to avoid punters he owed money to. Wife Margaret, then pregnant with Gerard, was left behind. When Gerard was six months old, Margaret took him, brother Brian, 44, and sister Lynn, 43, to Canada to join their father.
After two years, her marriage had broken down so she gathered the children and returned to Paisley.
She and the three children moved in with her mother May, who lived in a two- bedroom ground floor flat. Margaret put herself through secretarial school to make a living.
"I was born into a world of anxiety," Gerard says. He survived his childhood by losing himself in sport and in film fantasies. "I was a very, very feeling boy," he recalls. "My memories are mostly of feeling the intensity of things, especially in sports - football, badminton or volleyball - and thinking I was going to explode.
"I spent 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, doing manoeuvres. I dreamt a lot of performing in movies and living in fantasies."
As Gerard got older, the seeming impossibility of becoming an actor started to torment him.
"The idea of me fantasising about becoming an actor quickly led to depression," he says.
"No, it was never going to happen to me. I was a 16-year-old kid on the other side of the world from where they made movies."
But acting had captured Gerard's heart. Aged 12, he appeared as an urchin in a stage version of Oliver! at Glasgow's Kings Theatre. Three years later he declared to his mum that he wanted to be an actor. At 16 he joined a Scottish Youth Theatre summer programme.
But his acting ambitions were cut short by a promising career in law - to the relief of his family.
Gerard had performed well enough at school to earn a place on a law course at Glasgow University.
The legal profession held an allure of prestige, but from the start he knew his heart was not really in it.
"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 to my family. Wow, one of our own is studying law at university!"
He initially performed well, despite a minimum of effort.
"I've always kind of had the luck of the devil, even in law school," he says. "I kind of blagged my way into the position of president of the Law Society.
Gerard Butler
"I'm not the most academic of guys. Considering the amount of work that I put in, it's amazing that I got through law school. And with an honours degree."
But an undercurrent of unfulfilment started to manifest itself in heavy drinking.
Then, when Gerard was 22, his father died from cancer.
They had reconciled when Gerard was 16 and had grown close. Edward's death, aged just 54, affected Gerard deeply.
"I had gone from a 16-year-old who couldn't wait to grasp life to a 22-year-old who didn't care if he died in his sleep," he says.
When he returned to Scotland from his year-long blow-out in the US, what little enthusiasm Gerard had held for becoming a lawyer had completely evaporated.
But against the odds, the 23-year-old bagged a highly-competitive placement as a trainee solicitor at a leading law firm.
"There were 200 applications for that firm, and they were only taking four people," he says.
The day of the interview, he was recovering from post-exam celebrations and was late.
"I was really out of it when I did the interview. I used a few 'aids' to get up, and by the time I arrived, you couldn't shut me up. I ended up having a great interview and getting the job.
"But when I put on a suit and a tie, I became desperately unhappy."
To let off steam he joined a band - Speed of Life - with a legal pal Alan Stuart.
"Gerry was quite wild in those days and you never knew what he was going to do next," says Alan.
"The band had a residency during the Edinburgh Festival in the Fringe Club. They used to pack the place out and rocked it till it shook.
"They had to hire security as things could get a bit 'lively'."
Gerard recalls: "I should have seen it coming. I knew I wasn't going to make it through the Festival because it's crazy - comedy festivals, music festivals, dancing festivals, and more than anything, drinking festivals." He was right.
The Festival cost him his career in law - but it also put him on the road to Hollywood fame...
www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/scottish/scottish_showbiz/901826/Movie-hunk-reveals-all-about-his-incredible-life-in-sensational-new-book.html
Now this is what is odd the web link for this article says:
hunk-reveals-all-about-his-incredible-life-in-sensational-new-book.
It is highly doubtful that Gerry has written an autobiography and leaked a few pages to the News of the World, but does this mean someone has written an unauthorized biography and will it actually have anything new or revelatory to those who have been fans of Gerry for a long time esp if the "author" is leaking to the News of the World
If they were leaking pages to the NY Times be a different story LOL.
Most of it is nothing new to GB fans so nice to know a tabloid is sticking to what seems to be the facts....
The Gerard Butler Story
WE REVEAL STEAMY STORY BEHIND CINEMA'S HOTTEST HUNK
Slideshow 18 photos www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/scottish/scottish_showbiz/article808241.ece?slideshowPopup=true&articleId=808241&initialArticleId=808241
By Scott Hussey, 08/08/2010
MOVIE hunk Gerard Butler is one of Hollywood's most bankable stars - bringing box office success whether he's flexing his muscles in action flicks or making women go weak in rom-com romps.
IN the first of a two-part special, we chart his incredible life, from his humble Paisley beginnings to the wild drunken antics and failed law career that saw him eventually turn to acting... and become one of the world's top stars.
HUNGOVER, unshaven and exhausted from weeks of hard partying, Gerard Butler stood before his legal firm's stuffy senior partners to be asked: "Can you think of a reason why you should NOT be dismissed?"
Even though he had studied law for four years and was just ONE WEEK away from making his mother the proudest woman in Paisley by qualifying as a lawyer, Gerard had no answer.
All he could ponder was a catalogue of incidents from a lost year which had seen him HURL himself at a police car in a drunken stupor; end up SHACKLED with eight other cons in LA; and ROCK an Edinburgh fringe crowd into the small hours as lead singer in a band.
The trainee solicitor had no defence - and was promptly and unceremon- iously fired.
"I became quite infamous in Scottish legal circles. It's very difficult to be fired as a trainee lawyer," he recalls.
"That was the worst day of my life. Now it's the best," he adds.
It was a turning point - the moment Gerard decided to follow his true vocation and head for London to become an actor.
Gerard, now 40, went on to see his name roll on the credits for a string of small and big-screen productions, including Mrs Brown, Lara Croft Tomb Raider and The Phantom of the Opera.
Then, four years ago, he played buff King Leonidas in 300 and Hollywood started to come calling.
He has since starred with a string of big-name leading ladies, including Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You, Jodie Foster in Nim's Island, Katherine Heigl in The Ugly Truth, and Jennifer Aniston in The Bounty Hunter.
And he has had hard-hitting roles with Jamie Foxx in crime thriller Law Abiding Citizen, Gamer and in Guy Ritchie's action flick RocknRolla. Now there are four more films in the pipeline, including Burns, in which Gerard plays Scotland's most revered poet.
Fair to say he won't need to research the bard's bad boy lifestyle too hard. In the year leading up to the termination of his legal career Gerard embarked on a debauched spree of boozing, womanising and wild living.
Aged 22, he took a year off from his legal studies and headed to LA - where he was arrested repeatedly for drunken behaviour.
He says: "This is when things started to go a little crazy.
"Something very compulsive and dark and lusty and pleasurable but damaging took over.
"It was suddenly knowing I could go out and have a life of travelling, craziness, adventure, partying, women, and all the other things that go with that - including a sense of abandonment.
"Being away from home and not having the same kind of discipline and structure in front of me meant I could do whatever the f*** I wanted, and I did.
"For a while, I was living in an apartment in Venice Beach with three Irish guys who drank every day. It was perfect - we just got smashed. I started getting odd jobs. My buddies turned up one day and said they'd gotten a job working in a carnival that was going around the state fairs in California. In this year out of school, I did many things.
"I drove from LA to Miami, from LA to Chicago, from Miami to Chicago. And I kept getting arrested for stupid stuff, basically just being too drunk.
"I was out of control, and justifying it with this idea that I'm young, this is life - this is me just being boisterous."
He goes on: "I remember getting arrested once and they actually put me in shackles.
"I was walking around chained to eight other guys - and technically, I was still president of the Law Society in Glasgow.
"I ended up in LA County Jail. I was in a cell with my 501s and my tight leather jacket and my long hair thinking I was Jim Morrison."
He had been arrested for trying to jump on to a police car.
"They had already told me to move on because I was running about and being crazy.
Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston
"Then the next minute, I saw these lights coming towards me. I used to be crazy when I was drunk and I ran full-speed at the car. It was driving towards me and I was about to jump on to it, and the light started flashing."
He believes the incident perfectly illustrates why he is so hot as an actor. "The reason so many Scottish actors have done so well is that we have a lot of passion and sensitivity - and insanity, as well.
"We have a lot more going on, to be honest, than what your average American experiences in his life, and therefore we have more to say in cinematic terms."
Gerard was moulded by his upbringing in Paisley.
His bookmaker father Edward fled to Canada to avoid punters he owed money to. Wife Margaret, then pregnant with Gerard, was left behind. When Gerard was six months old, Margaret took him, brother Brian, 44, and sister Lynn, 43, to Canada to join their father.
After two years, her marriage had broken down so she gathered the children and returned to Paisley.
She and the three children moved in with her mother May, who lived in a two- bedroom ground floor flat. Margaret put herself through secretarial school to make a living.
"I was born into a world of anxiety," Gerard says. He survived his childhood by losing himself in sport and in film fantasies. "I was a very, very feeling boy," he recalls. "My memories are mostly of feeling the intensity of things, especially in sports - football, badminton or volleyball - and thinking I was going to explode.
"I spent 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, doing manoeuvres. I dreamt a lot of performing in movies and living in fantasies."
As Gerard got older, the seeming impossibility of becoming an actor started to torment him.
"The idea of me fantasising about becoming an actor quickly led to depression," he says.
"No, it was never going to happen to me. I was a 16-year-old kid on the other side of the world from where they made movies."
But acting had captured Gerard's heart. Aged 12, he appeared as an urchin in a stage version of Oliver! at Glasgow's Kings Theatre. Three years later he declared to his mum that he wanted to be an actor. At 16 he joined a Scottish Youth Theatre summer programme.
But his acting ambitions were cut short by a promising career in law - to the relief of his family.
Gerard had performed well enough at school to earn a place on a law course at Glasgow University.
The legal profession held an allure of prestige, but from the start he knew his heart was not really in it.
"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 to my family. Wow, one of our own is studying law at university!"
He initially performed well, despite a minimum of effort.
"I've always kind of had the luck of the devil, even in law school," he says. "I kind of blagged my way into the position of president of the Law Society.
Gerard Butler
"I'm not the most academic of guys. Considering the amount of work that I put in, it's amazing that I got through law school. And with an honours degree."
But an undercurrent of unfulfilment started to manifest itself in heavy drinking.
Then, when Gerard was 22, his father died from cancer.
They had reconciled when Gerard was 16 and had grown close. Edward's death, aged just 54, affected Gerard deeply.
"I had gone from a 16-year-old who couldn't wait to grasp life to a 22-year-old who didn't care if he died in his sleep," he says.
When he returned to Scotland from his year-long blow-out in the US, what little enthusiasm Gerard had held for becoming a lawyer had completely evaporated.
But against the odds, the 23-year-old bagged a highly-competitive placement as a trainee solicitor at a leading law firm.
"There were 200 applications for that firm, and they were only taking four people," he says.
The day of the interview, he was recovering from post-exam celebrations and was late.
"I was really out of it when I did the interview. I used a few 'aids' to get up, and by the time I arrived, you couldn't shut me up. I ended up having a great interview and getting the job.
"But when I put on a suit and a tie, I became desperately unhappy."
To let off steam he joined a band - Speed of Life - with a legal pal Alan Stuart.
"Gerry was quite wild in those days and you never knew what he was going to do next," says Alan.
"The band had a residency during the Edinburgh Festival in the Fringe Club. They used to pack the place out and rocked it till it shook.
"They had to hire security as things could get a bit 'lively'."
Gerard recalls: "I should have seen it coming. I knew I wasn't going to make it through the Festival because it's crazy - comedy festivals, music festivals, dancing festivals, and more than anything, drinking festivals." He was right.
The Festival cost him his career in law - but it also put him on the road to Hollywood fame...
www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/scottish/scottish_showbiz/901826/Movie-hunk-reveals-all-about-his-incredible-life-in-sensational-new-book.html
Now this is what is odd the web link for this article says:
hunk-reveals-all-about-his-incredible-life-in-sensational-new-book.
It is highly doubtful that Gerry has written an autobiography and leaked a few pages to the News of the World, but does this mean someone has written an unauthorized biography and will it actually have anything new or revelatory to those who have been fans of Gerry for a long time esp if the "author" is leaking to the News of the World
If they were leaking pages to the NY Times be a different story LOL.
DoNt mEsS WItH Ma mAn,DonT mESS WitH mA bOy!
Gave me Law Abiding Citizen flashbacks!
I was looking at the pic of him with touseled hair (and a wicked grin) and imagining him shackled to my bed and me having my way with him by the time I got to your post. I agree with GSG, though, they have to be the fuzzy handcuffs to protect his wrists. 
