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Gerard Butler: "I followed rolling after a car hit me"
It measures 1.88, speaks loudly and during our meeting calls for a ribeye. We spoke to the face that embodies the mess of being a man today
The Scottish actor is the image of the fragrance Boss Bottled and releases two films
The more advances the XXI century, more voices are added to the idea that masculinity does not exist, it is just a name used throughout the centuries to justify truly random behavior. Actor Gerard Butler (Scotland, 1969) exists. Measuring meter eighty eight, it has tips that look like beef, a noticeable presence up who has his back to him and a voice, almost all growl that comes out from the most abyssal torso. Precisely with that voice reached immortality nine years ago to utter one of the most repeated phrases of modern cinema. In 300, the epic fantasy about the battle of Thermopylae, his character, Leonids, harangue the troops bellowed: "This is Sparta ", and Butler says that nearly a decade later is still what you hear people whisper when they see down the street. Few minutes ago, however, he has done that voice is ask them to go up a ribeye steak and a cereal bar for Madrid hotel room where the interview takes place. On Friday April 8 premieres thriller Objective: London .
But now leads a quiet, with aquamarine eyes downcast, the half smile of someone who is thinking drawn on his face while. I was counting all the misdeeds committed by his character, Seth, the deity of brute force and unstoppable in his new film, Gods of Egypt (premiere in Spain in June), and has assaulted the doubt if he has done wrong before in any of his nine years as an actor at the forefront of Hollywood.
"Hey, Alan! ?! Did I ever wrong?!? "She calls out suddenly, without changing the position, driving the cry to the ground so hard that it bounces and goes straight into the next room, which is his assistant.
"I'm thinking ..." the faint response from the other room is heard. "I think not".
"Phantom [of The Phantom of the Opera, the adaptation of the musical that starred in 2004] I guess it was a bit bad , " recounts aloud, with that so carefree style that speaks like being on a desktop that it has lasted a long time. "And Abiding Citizen [one thriller in which he played a serial murderer in 2009] of course ...". Stay again absorbed, turning the 19 films he has shot since reaching stardom. He has made frightened father and family protector thrillers of action. He has made sexist pig and ex - boyfriend who pretends not to have broken heart in romantic comedies. Aggressive military commander in battles period. Veteran who has to teach younger pupils in sports tape. Charismatic bachelor who blames the world of their inability to mature and perfect husband in various dramas.
Gerard Butler does not know if has incarnated many bad, but what is certain is that many men incarnate marked by the fact of being men.
How to be a name in Hollywood - The business of representing masculinity in Hollywood is not as lucrative as it may seem. The display demand archetypes, and archetypes change with the fashions, so the paths are usually short (in the last 30 years we have gone from enigmatic exoticism of Rutger Hauer and cyclized ingenuity of Kurt Russell to look threatening Ray Liotta and Hence the youthful joy of Josh Harnett). And those who endure in time rarely changes may allow registration in other genres (Sylvester Stallone, Sean Connery, John Wayne and Lee Marvin, for example). Butler is a rarity that is making both things at once.
His secret was ahead of the expiry of classical virility and be the first to equip their characters in an increasingly characteristic vulnerability. Does not remember the time when it was proposed to do so, but, truth be told, does not remember a time that she liked the characters without kinks. Not even prostrate before television Paley, the town of 80,000 inhabitants in southern Scotland where he forged his vocation. "As a child I identified with the most imperfect characters. 'I want to be the Ghostbusters and throw lightning and do ...! "He recalls, staging a fall. "I liked Brando and, especially, Paul Newman ... That one he could do broken hero. Disaster love you because you identify with its imperfections, with his selfishness and stupidity. "
In American eyes, Butler exudes Old World atavism: seems both the father and the husband of the public. It's half and half Brideshead Budweiser. But above all it is that, thanks to his imposing physique, you can choose roles that enhance their fragility without his presence lose power. "I like that cracks in the varnish of the character, if you know what I mean, that, at least, you worry about something, because life is that," he insists. "No one is perfect and we are all looking for ways to make things better."
Q. But is comfortable with the label of representative of masculinity?
A. That if I'm ... jajajajajajaja. You know I'm ambassador Hugo Boss men's fragrance? And have you seen that carry a truncheon while giving with masculinity? I have to feel somewhat comfortable with what we pretend to be, right?
In July 2014, Hugo Boss announced that Butler would lend his image to Boss Bottled, its fragrance for men. Hence came a campaign, Man of today, which is still growing today, and the actor grabbed philosophy and applied it to every male on the planet: masculinity, proposed, it is more a matter of muscle charm. "It's fun to analyze what things do to each be male," he smiles. "What is between the virtues and defects, you know? That's what makes us what we are ... ". Winks. "I do not know if what I have said can be called answer."
The road so far has been anything but straight, but have come - Maybe this campechanía and this refusal to impress him he is half broken that came to Hollywood. In Scotland he grew up with his mother and his two brothers, his father lived in Canada. I only saw a couple of times before he died. When he learned of the death, Butler was about to enter law school at the University of Glasgow. Then he drank. Passed courses and continued drinking. He drank to dare to run in front of trains. Bottles and end up breaking them celebrate on his own head. Until dawn with wounds in the body without a memory in the mind. On one occasion, he woke up in Paris. In another, during a stay in Los Angeles in prison.
And yet achieved will be among the first in his class (still not explained), he was president of the Law Society of his college (this either) and got a job in a law firm for which they had submitted another 200 candidates (this even less: had such a hangover morning job interview that arrived hours late, and by the time he did, he had gotten so many aids in the body that there was none shut him). Soon, he was fired.
But the best exbebedores are not those who have the most incredible war stories, but those extracted from their lowest point more credible lessons. In the case of Butler, it was then 25 years old, humiliated and with all the opportunities that life had given him on fire. There he understood the importance of reinvention. "We have a unique vocation in life. What defines us is not so strict, "reasons today. "A man has to be versatile and dynamic. Should look for what you think is true, be it whatever. Everything is a trip, you know? And my life is like that of anyone: not only defined by a single profession, it is a journey that has fit all. "
In the midst of this disaster, he recalled a play of Trainspotting he had seen a little earlier in Glasgow and feelings that had awakened him. On the one hand, the desire to pursue acting; on the other, how difficult it would be to start from scratch at their age. But in the end, the blow that led to the dismissal left him no choice but to downplay the latter. So the next day he boarded a train and headed to London. Three years later, he had a role in Tomorrow Never Dies, the James Bond film. Then he staged a Dracula in Hollywood and soon, went on television as Attila the Hun in a miniseries that established him as the best choice to play warriors of time. He was five and a step of 300.
When the physical limits are the starting point - Among other racks was acquiring fame. As the years passed, they began to accumulate the stories of how physically extra mile in each shooting, how life is literally playing in the toughest planes. In 2011, during the filming of Chasing Mavericks, a band of surfers, a wave engulfed him and nearly drown him. He had to be hospitalized. This trend, however, seems a logical response to their carefree years of attorney: responding to a very strong sense of responsibility not to disappoint again. "A shooting is not like a game, if you get injured no one can replace you . As an actor you have about 300 people paying you , "he explains. "Every day we do not act, the study loses half a million or a million dollars. It is you a tremendous amount of that responsibility. So yes, I have continued to work even after I run over cars, nearly drowned, that I broke ligaments, muscles desgarrasen me, I saw bones under the skin ... ".
But the grace of responsibility is precisely that: it gives meaning to suffering. "Do anything was finishing filming Objective: London , " one thriller action which takes up the secret service agent who already played in Objective: the White House. "My last day we work 22 hours. One after another, without stopping. We complete all levels who had remained without rolling ... And they were all action. Towards the end of the day I could not walk. They had to help me . And I still had two planes: one that was climbing a scaffold and then another running. Hurt my hip, my back hurt, my feet hurt. "
Then he smiles, shaking his head: "And it was fantastic. You feel like an athlete, as you've worked really, that you've left blood, sweat and tears ... ". To finish the sentence, Gerard Butler roars. Literally. Open your mouth in a perfect square and pours a visceral roar, animal, almost eloquent. The battle cry of someone with such brute force in the gut that almost killed himself. Someone who has mastered that force, not hiding behind it, but putting it at the service of an end. Giving it a value. Turning what was a limitation on a starting point. Nobody knows what exactly masculinity, and probably not even exist, but if so, it would be nice that sounded like the roar of satisfaction Gerard Butler.
What lies ahead - After shooting Objective: London, Butler went straight to Germany to regain health in the hands of the same doctor who takes care of the football team of that country. He knows that with 46 years, it's going well. Therefore he insists enjoy moments like this. "I know that there is nothing subtle about me. But these months, in a film [Objective: London] I want to save the world and in the other [gods of Egypt] want to kill it "is smacking. "God I play in the latter steals the kingdom to his brother during the coronation and start a war with the rest of the gods, to see how I explain this, end the creation as it has always been in the Old Egypt. It is a hilarious idea. " Maybe I can start a new era being the bad guy. "Well ... Wait, I have done wrong before?".
