Best 56 quotes of Gerard Butler on MyQuotes

As long as you do the best work that you can and not make it bland... because you're going down a lane that is trying to make everybody happy. You have to take an angle on these things.

At first it was a bit strange and daunting to have to wear a mask, but afterwards I came to enjoy it. In warm conditions, though, it started to slip off my face. Other times they used this double-sided sticky tape, and I literally couldn't get it off my face. I would feel like I was ripping my face off and I had a lot of cuts and bruises because of it-huge red marks. People might think it was method acting.

Be the hero of your own life story.

Choosing the right mask helps you... We went through many masks. It was very particular leather that as soon as you smudged it, you had to get a new one. We went through about 55 masks.

Comedy is actually very hard. It's hard to choose those moments and know when you can really push it, and know when you should be bringing it back and making it more subtle, and knowing as time goes on, as you do take after take and the crowd around you stops laughing. Whenever you do comedy, you realize you're up against - you're performing next to people who you would think are so unbelievably good at it, that that's a bit of a pressure. But at the same time, it's just fun. It's fun to be able to let out that side of you.

Generally I don't like doing remakes, but I think that's more in the cynical world of Hollywood where normally remakes are purely for commercial reasons.

[How to train your dragon] is beautiful to look at and, again, those values that it contains about relationships, friendships, and bonding in the face of ignorance.

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.

I appreciate and love women for many reasons, tall and small, plump and skinny, and crazy and demure. I see beauty in all of them.

Iceland is 50 percent Celtic blood, from the females that they stole from us, which is why our country has only got dogs left. It was a joke! I'll never be let back in Scotland again!

I do get stressed at times, but I love what I do as an actor. This is the part that I don't like. I don't actually like talking about - I wish I could just go and get on with my job, because I love getting a script, breaking it down, working with other people, bonding with other people, fighting with other people, and out of those arguments, creating something that nobody expected and seeing it all come together. Telling a story, having an impact on people's lives, moving them and making them laugh.

I don't know whether it's spiritual development or trying to learn the psychologically with being an actor, but I realise the more I get into it that this was something I was always supposed to do. That allowed me to sit easiser in the life I was living. But that doesn't mean to say you just stroll through it. It takes work and the work is not always about acting. It's sometimes about how you deal with the ups and downs of hope, of expectation.

If you just tell the story of what the storys about, then it sparks curiosity, but I think it also arouses suspicion, as you say, that it could be overly sentimental. But it so isnt. And I think it was all about doing the inner work and then underplaying everything.

I had to go and sing with the musical director of the film, Simon Lee, who is just incredible, and it went great. I sang with him about five things, things we'd worked on. And then I went to sing for Andrew Lloyd Weber.

I had to prove myself to a lot of different people.

I know I have within myself... a side of solitude. I think people who know me can see, but people who just meet me can't because I'm generally very fun and gregarious. I love to spend a lot of time on my own. I can seriously go into my own head and often love to let myself travel where I don't know where I'm going. I always felt that that was his kind of form of escape, in a way.

I love a girl with a good sense of humour, who is confident but who has a sweetness to her - that melts my heart.

I love to do films of all shapes and sizes and feelings and genres. So for me to go from Tomb Raider straight into Dear Frankie, there's nothing that excites me more than to keep mixing it up.

I mean, I made The Phantom, although The Phantom was, believe it or not, an independent film. It was just a very large, expensive independent film.

I'm very down-to-earth. I think I'm still 'street'.

In actual fact, I wanted to be an actor, but I was a lawyer, and I was a week away from qualifying and was fired. And that's the day I made an announcement: "Hey, for seven years, you thought I was going to be a lawyer. Well, I'm not. I've just lost my job, and I'm packing my bags and moving to London tomorrow to be an actor.

In Scotland I'm just like a lot of other guys, but in America I'm seen as a very strong, masculine guy.

I sang in a rock band when I was training as a lawyer. You know, not professional, we just did it for fun. We just did gigs all over Edinburgh and some in Glasgow and some at festivals.

I spent many years not knowing where my dad was... Not knowing if my dad was alive, even. He turned up when I was 16 out of the blue.

I started singing for The Phantom in January, and we started filming in October and I sang all the way through to the next June. In fact, I was singing for about two months before I even knew I had the role.

I think I get laid less now than I used to, because I’m way more paranoid now.

I think it's one of the nicest privileges as an actor is to know that you can move people in one moment, make them think about their lives, or make them laugh or make them cry or make them understand something. Or just make them feel something because I think so many of us, including myself, spend too much time not feeling enough, you know?

I think some parts of the American justice system have gone haywire.

I think the American justice system has a lot more issues than the European justice system, especially the Scottish justice system. We have a really nice mix of European codified law and the traditional English system of common law, which is what the American system is based on.

It's so incredible when you meet somebody who comes up and passionately tells you how much they liked you in a movie, or how much they liked thamovie. That's a great thing, because I know what I get out of watching a great movie. So I love what I do, but it's more - I don't think there'd be anybody who would tell you that, even if it's something they love doing, they don't get stressed out by it. I'm a very intense person, so I go very intensely and passionately into what I do.

I was amazed and upset by the looks I got just walking around the studio... It illuminates the ugliness and the beauty that exists within each of us, and that's what this story represents to me.

I was training to be a lawyer... I was president of the law society at Glasgow University, and my bass guitarist was my secretary of my law society; the lead guitarist and writer worked at the law firm that I worked.

Lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten.

My problem is, whether it's for emotion or for the talents that a character has to have in a role, I find it very difficult to not take on a challenge. I need to say, "Okay, enough, take the easy road." But the easy road for me is not - it might just come out coincidentally. I wouldn't ever choose a movie because it's easy. I might choose a movie because I feel like being funny, or I feel like being able to do something that is perhaps dramatic, but to a lesser degree. Because I like switching it up, basically, not because I would take the easier road.

My Range Rover is great for LA. You can take surfboards on it and stick some bikes in the back. And if you kidnap people you could tie them up in the back, there's space for your chloroform.

Of course when you spend four hours in prosthetic makeup and you really are looking at yourself and you see how revolting you've become in a way, it obviously adds another strand and helps you... a little bit more.

One thing I've learned as an actor as well as a producer is to trust my own instinct. When I first started acting I would sometimes have ideas about certain things, whether it's a scene, or a character or certain dialogue, that wouldn't be followed. I was never in a position to have the power to press the matter. Sometimes it wasn't even about my character. But I'd watch the movie afterwards and think I was right.

On Phantom... I listened to the music while I was reading the script. And it had just blown me away. I really... I was so excited about it. It's been a long time since I really got so excited about something.

So many actors get caught up in their technique, and to be honest, I see it really getting in the way. I see them forcing things. I definitely do my best work when I'm free of that. But I think as an actor, I work really hard in preparing the roles. I spend like 90 percent of my waking moments walking around thinking: "What does this character do? What is his relationship with so-and-so?" Always, really. Too much!

Sometimes along the way in my life I don't want a smart woman right now, I want a dumb woman. But then you think, that doesn't work, now I want a smart woman. Then you get a smart woman and you go no, that doesn't work so it's just killing me right now.

The chance to be both artistically appreciated and commercially appreciated... That's what you hope for.

The fact that you touched somebody's soul or made them laugh-that's a wonderful thing.

Theres a great sense of achievement, testosterone, fun, being able to live out your masculinity when you play an action role or an action-adventure or a real tough-guy role.

There's always advantages and disadvantages to doing any role. And there's a great sense of achievement, testosterone, fun, being able to live out your masculinity when you play an action role, or an action-adventure, or a real tough-guy role. Really, if you're doing a comedy, you can sit back and relax. And it's good to know that at the end of the day, you don't have to run off for another two hours and go to the gym, or go spend the rest of the night swordplaying with stunt guys. Then I think, "Oh my God, I love comedy.".

The Scots will do anything to beat the English or just to see them lose, but I've never bought into that really.

The thing about courage is it’s something that we have to learn and relearn our whole lives.  It’s not just in you, it’s in every choice we make every day.

The truth is never pretty.

To me, all those jobs I did [roles] have been amazing experiences for one reason or another. I got paid and I learned something. I think that's what helped me carry on because I've never really given out that energy of, "oh, I've lost my chance" or missed it in some way.

Up in the north of Scotland, a lot of the villages are completely Viking names. A lot of Vikings came down and settled in Scotland and in Ireland. And a lot of them didn't, but they took plenty of us with them - mostly the chicks.

Whenever I watched this movie ["How to Train Your Dragon"], I thought, "That's where I want to be. I want to be up in that sky. I want to be flying through the clouds and be living in that environment." So I think if I had a dragon, I would spend most of my time up in the air all over the place and taking in this beautiful planet.