He always made time to socialize with his fans and hung out with crew members as much as with the star actors on film sets, so he quickly earned a reputation as one of the best actors around.
He has a law degree from the University of Glasgow, but he gave up his legal career after being fired from a law firm just one week before he qualified to practice law.
On the first day of the first shoot for Mrs. Brown (1997), he had to run naked into a freezing sea and developed hypothermia as a result. Later, during filming, he saved a young boy from drowning in the River Tay and received a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society.
He had the rock and roll voice Andrew Lloyd Webber always wanted to hear as the Phantom.
He cried while talking to Joel Schumacher, the director of The Phantom of the Opera (2004), about the Phantom's loneliness.
Before he finally quit drinking at the age of 27, he said in an interview that his wild drinking escapades included smashing bottles over his own head, running in front of cars, and that he once woke up in Paris, miles from where he had been at a party, covered in cuts and blood, and that to this day he has no idea what happened that night.
He campaigned for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and was among the actors considered. The role ultimately went to Ben Affleck.
His favorite actors are Christian Bale and Gary Oldman.
He did not start acting until he was twenty-five.
He constantly tries to quit smoking using hypnosis, patches, lasers and the most common methods. He took a six-month break during the filming of 300 (2006) but started again toward the end of the shoot.
He was once the lead singer of a Scottish rock band called Speed, but in the end music became his second love after acting.
He prefers to be called Gerry. He does this because he notices that many people (especially Americans) have trouble pronouncing "Gerard".
He graduated from the University of Glasgow with a law degree.
During the production of The Phantom of the Opera (2004), it took four hours to do his makeup and prosthetics.
On December 18, 2011, he was rescued after a surfing accident in Northern California. He and three other people were hit by freak waves while filming a scene for Chasing Mavericks (2012). He was held underwater and dragged over a rocky reef until a safety officer on a jet ski rescued him. He was hospitalized and released due to minor injuries.
In October 2018, on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2015), it emerged that he was the first person in the history of the Scottish legal system to be fired before qualifying as a lawyer.
He is close friends with Bradley Cooper.
He jokes about preferring the masked side of his face to the normal side.
He has no formal acting training.
His name, like the typical Gerard, has a long "A" pronounced like 'errd'. "Ger" is pronounced like 'chair', with the "ard" not pronounced that way. It is pronounced like 'chair-errd'.
He sang in a rock band while studying law.
Besides singing in a band at university, he had no musical experience before taking the lead role in The Phantom of the Opera (2004).
When he auditioned for the role of "Aslan the Lion" in the Walden Media/Disney production of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), he asked, "This isn't going to be like the BBC puppet Aslan, right? Because, if so, I'm leaving right now".
He is a big fan of the Glasgow Celtic football club. In 2011, he played for them in a charity match against Manchester United.
He did not see his father from the age of 2 until he was 16.
He was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 sexiest stars in cinema history (at No. 10). [2007].
[On whether the famous six-pack he showed in 300 was real] When people first saw the images, they thought my abs were fake and retouched on a computer. I assure you those really were my abs. I pushed myself so hard for this film that my abs became huge. I was constantly given this instruction: "You are playing the king, you need to set an example (for the other actors)."
He is Scottish but partly of Irish descent. He also stated that for this reason there is no tartan in his family.
Before his final year of law school, Butler took a year off to live in California. He mostly lived in Venice Beach, worked various jobs, traveled often and, by his own account, drank a lot, and at one point was arrested for alcohol-related disorderly behavior.
He divides his time between Los Angeles, Malibu and New York.
He was once said (after Pierce Brosnan) to be the next James Bond.
Gerard Butler won the lead role in Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla on the basis of the shredded eight-pack abs he famously displayed in the global hit 300. When producer Susan Downey was asked why Ritchie cast Butler in the lead, she said, "Guy saw Gerry in 300, and just fell in love with his abs and decided to cast him in our movie." Ritchie reiterated: "He had a rather impressive set of abs in 300." Ironically, although Butler was cast for his abs, he actually never got the chance to show them, since he has no shirtless scene in the film.
He was president of the Law society at university.
Among his acting roles, he worked various jobs such as waiting tables, telemarketing and demonstrating how toys worked at fairs.
He visited a camp for internally displaced people in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, run by Sean Penn and his Jenkins-Penn Humanitarian Relief Organization, alongside Ben Stiller, Demi Moore, Susan Sarandon and director Paul Haggis.
In the first two years of his career he could not find professional acting work.
He was approved for a role in Mindhunters (2004), but chose to leave the role due to his prior commitment to Timeline (2003). The shooting schedules of the two films overlapped. Jonny Lee Miller, with whom Butler had co-starred in Dracula 2000 (2000), stepped in to take on the Mindhunter role.
He often went to weekly Jazz nights hosted by Danny Masterson in Beverly Hills. Samantha Ronson, Bo Barrett, Ben Foster, Kirsten Dunst and Adam Scarimbolo were frequently seen there.
He was chosen as the most attractive man of 2005 by Hello! magazine.
His first stage role was in Coriolanus. During rehearsals for the play, a wooden stake went into his eye. He later played Tullus Aufidius in the film Coriolanus (2011).
He has made five films with his character's name in the title: Dracula 2000 (2000), Attila (2001), The Phantom of the Opera (2004), Beowulf & Grendel (2005) and Burns (2006).
He co-hosted the 2003 MTV Europe Music Awards with fellow Scot Billy Boyd.
When his parents separated in Canada and his mother returned to Glasgow with him, he was the youngest of 3 children under the age of 6.
He studied law at the University of Glasgow, from which he graduated.
To date he has played three period drama warrior leaders: Leonidas in 300 (2006), Stoick the Vast in the How to Train Your Dragon series, and the title character in Attila (2001); Stoick is the first character he will reprise in live action.
He was 16 by the time he saw his father again.
I was born at 5:21 a.m. (EST).