Toronto Sun Interview - Gerard Butler's six pack is back in 'Playing For Keeps'

Interesting interview:

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/11/29/gerard-butlers-six-pack-is-back-in-playing-for-keeps

Gerard Butler's six pack is back in 'Playing For Keeps'

It's not usually considered good form to open an interview by calling someone "a freakin' liar."

But it was delivered with a smile, and I figured Gerard Butler would have a sense of humour about it.

The point of contention was an interview he'd given for The Ugly Truth -- the rom-com he'd made with Katherine Keigl -- at which he as much as guaranteed that he'd never be seen sporting Spartan six-pack abs again. "I was ridiculous in 300," he'd said, describing the regimen as "incredibly difficult" and "pointless."

True to his word at the time, paparazzi had rudely photographed him on the beach looking less than Spartan.

So have you seen Gerard Butler lately?

The six-pack was back for the "big-wave" surfing movie Chasing Mavericks, and he's still in form in Playing for Keeps, in which he plays a former British football star who scores with the soccer moms (played by the likes of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Uma Thurman) in small-town Virginia.


"I'll say anything in the moment," he says with a laugh when I drop the F-bomb-lite on him.

"By the way, in my defence," he goes on, "I probably felt that at the time because I went through a lot of training for 300. And The Ugly Truth was shortly after that. And for The Ugly Truth I didn't have to worry about it quite so much. So I had the luxury of saying that.

"But then another movie comes along, and it's happened a few times. For Olympus Has Fallen (the Anton Fuqua action-film that's coming out in April), I had to get the abs back again. And then you swear that's it! And then vanity gets the better of you."

In Playing for Keeps, Butler plays George Dryer, a down-on-his-luck former FIFA star who -- in an effort to patch things up with his ex-wife (Jessica Biel) and son (Grant Goodman) -- moves to the non-soccer mecca of Alexandria, Va., a place where "football" means passes and field goals, and where he's not only a has-been a never-was. However, the recent uptick in soccer's "coolness" Stateside presents George with opportunities, both financial and sexual.

One last word about the abs. I happen to know a few ex-pro athletes, and have noticed that once they leave their high-calorie-burning career behind, they have a tendency to, well, you know.

"That's very true," Butler says. "And interestingly, we had that very discussion.

"And for a while the thought was that it was worth putting on some weight because there was a lot to be said for him being a little sloppy. But at the same time, part of the story is this hot new guy arrives in town and all the women want a piece of him. And that wouldn't necessarily be so believable if I'd turned up kind of overweight and sluggish."

But the other half of George's predicament is familiar to the Scottish actor. The football-mad Butler knows all about worshipping a sport with the visibility of a ghost. "Fox Sports has (the English Premier League). And I've had to go into bars for important games and try to persuade them to take it off of American football or baseball and turn it to the soccer game. So often you find yourself at one little corner of the bar, unless you can find yourself a good Irish bar or British bar."

(He also admits to have been contaminated enough to have "gone home and said 'soccer' instead of football, and my face was flush red with embarrassment the rest of the day").

"It was another thing that George had to contend with -- one being a fish out of water in this little town, but also being in a sport which isn't particularly recognized. So any attention he gets, he doesn't particularly feel he deserves. So for instance, Dennis Quaid's character (a local millionaire who "adopts" George for status), he really wants to be his buddy because he knows he was somebody, even if he doesn't know exactly what he was."

The movie, with its theme of a guy being offered to sell his soul for, essentially, money and sex, "started out feeling like Shampoo when we were working on it, and it ended up more like About A Boy," Butler says.

George takes every opportunity offered him, serious or trivial. And if it seems like Butler has become an actor who can't say no -- two films within a month of each other, and Olympus Has Fallen (in which he plays the President's bodyguard) soon to come -- he's not ashamed of it. He remembers being called "Gerald" repeatedly at his first visit to the Toronto International Film Festival (for the Canadian movie Beowulf & Grendel with Sarah Polley), and says, "at any time in my line of work, things could just fall by the wayside.

"I remember talking with a certain actor at Cannes, and he'd actually won an Oscar. And photographers came over and a bunch of people asked to take a photograph with me, and didn't ask to take it with him. And I was saying to him, 'Gee, this is a pain in the ass. We were having a great conversation.'

"And he said, 'It doesn't last forever. And I tell you, you kind of miss it when it goes.'

"And I thought about that, and it's so true. You can sit in a maelstrom and go, 'This is frustrating. But then when it doesn't happen you go, 'Hey, come back! Do you want a photograph?' "

SIDEBAR The double-standard lives. In Playing For Keeps, Gerard Butler is an ex-soccer star who scores with soccer moms in small-town Virginia. Other than Sex And The City, Hollywood comedies don't go there with women much.

Anyway, here's our subjective list of movie man-whores.

1. James Bond. In his various incarnations, Bond has slept with 55 women in 23 films, according to quora.com. (The number varies according to innuendo).

2. Warren Beatty in Shampoo. For a minute in pop culture, the gay-hairdresser stereotype hairdresser was shattered. What all this had to do with Nixon, remains a mystery.

3. Mel Gibson in What Women Want. His recent record with women suggests life isn't a movie, but Mel was believable as a cad whose mojo is shaken when he acquires the ability to read women's minds and see them as more than objects.

4. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in Iron Man. Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) not only sends Tony's latest one-night-stands home in the morning, but remains available herself. What a swell gal Friday!

5. Tatum Channing in Magic Mike. What's a male stripper to do but take his work home with him?

Runners-up: Rocker Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek, Guido (the womanizing director played by Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine, and his predecessor Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini's 8 1/2), Austin Powers