Vancouver Sun Interview - Gerard Butler did it all

http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Gerard+Butler+Playing+Keeps/7639208/story.html

Gerard Butler did it all

The Scottish actor stars in and produces Playing for Keeps

It's rare for Gerard Butler to use his Scottish burr in American movies.

He did manage a stylized version of his brogue as Spartan King Leonidas in the R-rated action hit 300 and he tried a variation as the Viking king in the animated motion picture How to Train Your Dragon.

But the 43-year-old finally gets to sound like himself in Playing for Keeps, which opens Dec. 7. In the comedy, he portrays retired Glasgow Celtic soccer star George Dryer who is trying to be a better person by coaching his son’s soccer team in a suburban Virginia town.

“I was really happy that the film allowed me to speak as me,” said Butler at a downtown Toronto hotel. “I could relax into the role, and I didn’t need to be consulting with a dialect coach after every scene.”

However, in the film. George’s effort to improve doesn’t come easy. He’s desperately broke and divorced from his wife (Jessica Biel). He’s also surrounded by over-sexed soccer moms (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Uma Thurman and Judy Greer) and one aggressive soccer dad (Dennis Quaid) who keep complicating his life.

As the soccer moms get up close and personal with the new coach, George realizes he wants his life back as a husband and father.

“He’s a fish out of water,” said Butler. “He’s lost his way, but he starts to realize you don’t get many second chances to appreciate a wife, family and fatherhood, so he’s really trying to grow up.”

That’s the serious side of the story. The humour arrives when everybody around him attempts to entice him back to his old carousing ways.

“He’s really an observer to what’s going on around him,” noted the actor. “A lot of the scenes I have with Dennis (Quaid) and Uma (Thurman), I’m just listening and reacting.”

And yes, as the headliner and co-producer, Butler said that he’s pleased and excited about landing the all-star cast.

The Butler charm might have had a little something to do with that. But he insisted the Robbie-Fox script and the reputation of Italian director Gabrielle Muccino, of The Pursuit of Happiness fame, proved to be enticing factors, as well.

“There was a stage of panic when I was the only person on board,” he said of the project in its early stages. Then Muccino was hired to direct the Fox script. “And getting Gabrielle really helped to garner the support from the other actors.”

Certainly, Butler selected his vehicle well. He has a knack for comedy, and he’s a decent soccer player, having played growing up in Paisley, Scotland, before moving to Glasgow to study law at university.

He connected with the stranger-in-a-strange American landscape, too. Butler admitted he felt a little like his estranged Playing for Keeps character with his initial breakout as an actor.

That would be just after his 2003 co-starring role opposite Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life and 2004’s lead as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera. Before that, he was a journeyman from 1997 to 2000. He made appearances in Mrs. Brown, the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies and Tale of the Mummy and was the headliner in Dracula 2000.

“By the time 300 came along I had adjusted so it wasn’t a big jump for me,” Butler said. “But that first time I had success in America, I had to learn to live with it and learn how to take it in stride.”

On the other hand, he had a little technical help to establish his soccer presence as a pro player in some sequences. Through the magic of special effects, the film shows Butler as Dryer playing in real Celtic soccer games, with the actor inserted later.

“We did my stuff indoors and put me in soccer games digitally, so I had to repeat all the moves of the player I was replacing,” he pointed out.

In fact, it was Butler who pushed for the switch from little-league baseball in the original screenplay to soccer when he became attached to the production. And it wasn’t just because of his athletic abilities.

“We wanted the movie to have more of an international appeal,” he said. “And soccer is one of the fastest growing youth sports in North America.”

That’s Butler speaking more as a producer than an actor. He’s no stranger to producing either. Previously, he did double-duty as actor and producer on Law Abiding Citizen, Machine Guy Preacher and the upcoming spy thriller Olympus Has Fallen set for release next spring.

Still, there’s no question Playing for Keeps has a special place in the Butler movie biography after acting with Quaid, Thurman, Biel, Greer and Zeta-Jones.

“Every day I would think to myself, ‘You got to be kidding me.’”