Gerard Butler’s co-star, two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, managed to survive a boxing movie without injury however she wasn’t so lucky on the set of P.S. I Love You. During the filming of Butler’s striptease, Swank was struck in the face with one of Butler’s suspenders and required stitches. Butler, of course, felt horrible about the accident. “It was maybe my worst day as an actor. I can laugh now because she laughs at it, and quite enjoys telling people the story,” said Butler. “But at the time, I mean, it was an accident but still the suspender was on my boxer shorts. It got stuck behind me and I’d been doing this scene for a day and a half, stripping, moving, dancing, and then pretending that it hits me in the eye. And it got stuck behind me and flew over my head, and hit her in the head.”
“Within 5 minutes she’d been taken to the hospital. The whole set, everyone was talking, ‘That’s a wrap,’ and they’re all gone. And I’m sitting on the bed on my own. And I have to say, I busted my balls in that scene. There’s times as an actor where you go, ‘Okay, I know I’ve given a lot for this.’ And you’re making a fool of yourself, you’re dancing about in front of a bunch of guys, it’s appreciated when you keep that up that you’ve given a lot. And at the end of that all I had as thanks was that I scarred Hilary Swank and that a production had shut down for five days [laughing]. It was kind of like, ‘This isn’t right. I don’t feel I deserve that.’ But she was so cool about it immediately, literally when it happened. She knew that it wasn’t pretty and I said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ She said, ‘Don’t even go there. Don’t even go there because this [isn’t] your fault,’ which I thought said a lot about Hilary, the kind of person she is.”
The huge box office success of 300 helped propel Gerard Butler into a different level of stardom, although his diehard fans (he could quite possibly be the most popular actor on the internet, based on the incredible number of fansites dedicated to his life and career) didn’t need that action epic to know Butler’s one to watch. Asked how his life’s changed over the past few years with a couple of starring roles in big studio films under his belt, Butler replied, “My bones creak a little bit more. I mean, it’s changed. I can’t avoid the fact that, in terms of success with my career, that’s changed a lot. In terms of the work that I’m now doing, the interest, even awareness, it’s all increased hugely. That’s been fantastic, but it’s brought a whole new set of pressures. That is also kind of learning, how would you say, to pace myself because I’m now presented with even better work and better directors and more exciting opportunities and it’s hard to resist that. So I’ve now done three films back to back and I’ve said no to a hundred times that many, so it’s kind of tough.”
“But in terms of anything other than that, celebrity status or stardom, that’s always just a matter of degree anyway. You can still get around that. I think a lot of people really play on that a little too much and it’s not really my thing. I’m very blessed to do what I do, and I work really hard at it. In fact, I think I work too hard at it [laughing]. I think that I should calm it down a little and take some time off, but it’s a good feeling when you can feel there’s a real strong foundation and the ball is rolling on its own, and you don’t have to hype yourself around and do anything other than the jobs, which is really what I [like]. I can’t lie. If I could just stick to the acting and not have to do press, I’d be more than happy, because I’m an actor. I find it hard to do both. Like, I’m in the middle of a film right now and already struggling to get through that film. It’s great, I love it, but it’s hard work. And then suddenly you have to come and do 250 interviews about a film… I’ll finish here and go straight back and start working at 5 on Tuesday morning.”
As for choosing roles, Butler doesn’t have a grand plan but he does have specific things he looks for in scripts. “I think you have some general guidelines, but you can’t apply some hard and strict rules about that. At the end of the day it’s what excites you the most, for whatever reason that may be, because the script is so well-written or brilliant or imaginative, or the character is really cool or different or moving. But also being careful not to climb back into the same hole you’ve just been in, so I’m always trying to change it up a little bit.”
The actor was rumored to be attached to the Untouchables prequel and had been announced as taking over the role of Snake Plissken in the remake of Escape from New York, something the original Snake - Kurt Russell - wasn't too pleased to hear. Commenting on those two projects, Butler said, “Untouchables was something where I’d never done anything like that before so. I don’t know what’s going on with that right now. Snake Plissken, that I’d say the changes are not quite going the way that I wanted to see them go so I’m not involved in that one anymore. This often happens. You get involved in projects on the understanding that, at the end of the day for a million different reasons, they might not happen. You know, you hope they will. A lot of the projects I have over the years become involved in are because other actors who were involved in them dropped out, so I guess that’s the way they worked.”
