Sci Fi Wire
July 18, 2003

Butler Pumped For Future Films

Gerard Butler, co-star of the upcoming Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, told SCI FI Wire that bulking up was part of connecting with his character, a mercenary who teams up with the film's heroine, Lara Croft. "I often find that the technical training and physical training that you have to do for parts [like this] takes you a lot of the way towards establishing your character, and often the guys who train you are in the field that you are pretending to be in, so they give you so much more," Butler said in an interview.

But Tomb Raider isn't the only movie for which Butler has had to get brawny. The Scottish actor bemoaned having to get big for another genre film, Timeline—the big-screen adaptation of Michael Crichton's medieval time-travel tale—only to be told to get rid of it. "I was pumped up a lot for Timeline, and then I got [on set], and [the director, Richard Donner,] said, 'I don't see this character as big'! So I kind of let it go a bit."

Nor will this be the last film for which he'll be asked to work out. Butler is to star in the long-awaited film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, and he's been told he needs to be a bit huskier for the lead role. When asked what viewers can expect (aside from a well-built protagonist) in this cinematic take on the wildly successful musical (which is set to start shooting in September), Butler said that the movie will be somewhat less operatic. "There'll be more talking in it, and more of the singing will be [low-key]," he said. "The whole thing is just going to be more pulled down and filmic, where we'll be able to express more subtle emotions, rather than having to belt it out, like on stage. That will be one big advantage of film."

When asked why it's taken so long for Phantom to make it to the screen, Butler said that, to his understanding, it's mostly been a matter of bad timing. "I think there's like 25 different stories," he said. "It was just always things cropping up—Andrew was busy, [director] Joel [Schumacher] was busy, it wasn't the right time. There was always just things going on, until everybody was in the right place at the right time." Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life opens July 25.