Gerard Butler - Biography

Scottish actor Gerard Butler spent seven miserable years studying law before trying his hand at acting on the London stage. Half a decade later, a much happier Butler had over a dozen theater, movie, and television credits under his belt, including starring roles in the stage version of Trainspotting (1996) and the award-winning film Mrs. Brown (1997). Born on November 13, 1969, in Glasgow, Butler is the youngest of Margaret and Edward Butler's three children; he has a sister and a brother. When Butler was barely six months old, his family relocated to Montréal, Canada, where his father undertook several failed business ventures. A year and a half later, Butler's parents divorced, and his mother took the children back to Scotland. He saw his father once more when he was four years old, and then not again until he was 16. In the meantime, Butler grew up in his mother's hometown of Paisley, where he frequented a nearby movie theater. Enamored with acting, he convinced his mother to take him to auditions, eventually joining the Scottish Youth Theatre and playing a street urchin in Oliver! at the Kings Theatre in Glasgow. An exceptional student, Butler graduated at the top of his class. Hoping to please his family and his teachers, who felt acting was an unrealistic career choice, Butler enrolled in Glasgow University's law program. He served as the president of the school's law society and earned an honor's degree. After finishing college, Butler took a year and a half off to live in Los Angeles, where he appeared as an extra in the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston vehicle The Bodyguard (1992). He then traveled to Canada to be at his father's bedside as he succumbed to cancer. Shortly after his father's death, Butler returned to Scotland to begin a two-year law traineeship in Edinburgh at one of the country's top firms. But he was bored and discontented as a lawyer, and still dreamed about performing. He went to see Trainspotting on-stage at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and knew he had made the wrong career choice. Soon enough, Butler's unhappiness began to show in his work, and his firm fired him with only a week left in his training. Two days later, at age 25, he moved to London to begin his acting career. Butler took on a series of odd jobs -- from waiting tables to demonstrating clockwork toys at a trade show -- while looking for work as an actor. He was supposed to be serving as a casting assistant for the play Coriolanus at the Mermaid Theatre when he ran into the show's director, actor Steven Berkoff, at a coffee bar and asked to read for a part. Impressed with the ex-barrister's moxie, Berkoff agreed and Butler secured his first professional acting role. While rehearsing for Coriolanus, he accompanied one of the other actors to an audition for the same stage adaptation of Trainspotting he had seen in Edinburgh and landed the lead part of Mark Renton. In 1997, with his theater career firmly established, Butler made his big-screen debut opposite Billy Connolly and Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown. Sometime later, he had returned to the film's shooting location, Taymouth Castle, for a picnic when he saw a child drowning in the nearby River Tay. Butler dove into the water and saved the boy. The actor received a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society for his selfless act. That same year, he earned a small speaking part as a bad guy in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies before spoofing ex-Wet Wet Wet singer Marti Pellow for the 1998 series The Young Person's Guide to Becoming a Rock Star. Butler finished out the '90s by appearing in the television comedy Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, as well as returning to the stage to appear opposite Sheila Gish and Rachel Weisz in Suddenly, Last Summer in London's West End. Butler began the new millennium with supporting parts in the gangster film Shooters (2000) and the war drama Harrison's Flowers (2000). He then simultaneously landed the high-profile title roles in Wes Craven's Dracula 2000 (2000) and the USA television movie Attila (2001). Produced by the creators of The Mummy franchise, Attila chronicled the life of the eponymous fifth century barbarian and co-starred veteran actors Tim Curry and Powers Boothe. It also re-teamed Butler with his Coriolanus director, Berkoff, who played his uncle in the film. The hype that surrounded both Dracula 2000 and Attila was fueled by CNN's announcement that Butler was the frontrunner to replace Pierce Brosnan as the next James Bond. The following months, however, were anticlimactic for Butler. Dracula 2000 bombed at the box office and Attila, though one of the year's highest-rated television miniseries, proved to be forgettable. The rumors surrounding his involvement with 007 were quickly quelled when Brosnan announced that he was staying on for at least two more Bond films, and the series' producers never contacted Butler. Determined to get back on his feet, Butler signed on with a new agency. He returned to British television for ITV's miniseries The Jury (2002), which also featured Derek Jacobi and Antony Sher, while simultaneously filming a role as Christian Bale's dragon-slaying best friend in the special-effects spectacle Reign of Fire (2002). He then quickly landed a supporting role in Renny Harlin's Mindhunters with Val Kilmer and LL Cool J, but pulled out of the project to play the lead in Richard Donner's long-awaited adaptation of Michael Crichton's best-selling novel Timeline (2003). Butler also turned heads as Angelina Jolie's hunky love interest in the sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life that same year. Though, to this point in his career, Butler had no doubt displayed immense talent as an actor, the films he had appeared in had almost consistently disappointed in terms of box-office returns. In 2004, that disheartening trend continued as Butler donned the famous mask of the disfigured musical genius made popular on the stage by actor Michael Crawford in the big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, with subsequent roles in The Game of Their Lives and Beowulf & Grendel doing little to increase his international recognizability. By 2006, it seemed that Butler was finally poised to break big, and as he prepared to lead the soldiers of Sparta in battle against the overwhelming forces of the Persian Empire in Dawn of the Dead director Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's popular graphic novel 300, it appeared as if he was determined to do so in style. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide

Daniel Craig - Biography

British actor Daniel Craig became known to audiences the world over when he was revealed as the new James Bond, slated to cement his role as the suave spy in 2006's Casino Royale. His status as an action star was quite sudden, and many were surprised at the announcement, thinking of him as an unknown. Ironically, the classically trained actor had put nearly 50 roles under his belt over the previous 15 years, from star-studded Hollywood features to highly respected independent ventures. Before Craig was a working actor, much less a famous one, he didn't just want to be an actor, he wanted to be a good one. At the age of six he was appearing in school plays in Liverpool, at 14 he was acting on his high school stage in West Kirby, and by 16 he auditioned for and joined the National Youth Theater's troupe for their tours of Manchester, Spain, and Russia. He went on to toil through low-paying jobs as he repeatedly auditioned for the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama, determined to get in and undergo the classical training that would help him excel at his craft. Finally in 1988 at the age of 20, he was accepted and proceeded to study there for the next three years under the tutelage of Royal Shakespeare Company veteran Colin McCormack. After graduating in 1991, Craig had a whirlwind of activity to keep up with. In 1992 he began his career on screen, appearing in the film The Power of One. He also married Scottish actress Fiona Loudon, who gave birth to their daughter Ella that same year. He would appear in over ten films, TV movies, television shows, and failed pilots over the next two years, until his marriage to Louden came to an end in 1994. He got back in the game in 1995 with a role in the Disney film A Kid in King Arthur's Court, returning to England soon afterward to star in the acclaimed BBC2 miniseries Our Friends in the North and the four-part series Moll Flanders. It seemed that the actor couldn't stay busy enough, working on several projects a year that ranged from highly respectable drama to trash TV horror. In 1997 he worked with German director Peter Sehr on Obsession where he met his future girlfriend, German actress Heike Makatsch. His first leading role in the U.K. came in 1998 with his portrayal of George Dyer, the intimate friend of painter Francis Bacon (played by Derek Jacobi) in John Maybury's Love Is the Devil. He was developing an impressive resumé and a great skill at taking on an entirely new persona with each new role. He would play a 19th century Irish refuge in Love & Rage, a young soldier in the WWI film The Trench, a framed Jesuit priest in the royal biopic Elizabeth (Starring Cate Blanchett), a Kenyan gamekeeper in the Kim Basinger film I Dreamed of Africa, and the manager of a run-down hotel and health-spa in the satirical comedy Hotel Splendide. American audiences finally got a real taste of Craig's acting when he took a part in an action-packed summer blockbuster, 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Playing Angelina Jolie's present rival and former lover, Craig was so effective at his trademark immersion into his role that audiences hardly recognized him when he appeared the next year in The Road to Perdition as the spoiled son of an Al Capone-era mob boss, complete with a perfect American accent. His skill for blending so adeptly into his character and environment gave him the odd combination of being wildly praised but seldom recognized. He would appear in many more challenging and thought-provoking roles over the next few years, most notably as Ted Hughes, poet and husband to Sylvia Plath (Played by Gwyneth Paltrow) in the biopic Sylvia (2003). In 2004, he took British audiences on a thrill ride as a coke dealer without a name in Layer Cake, which became a sleeper hit in the U.S. as well. The following year found him playing significant roles in American films like The Jacket and Steven Spielberg's Munich. The script that would mark his debut in the franchise would be Casino Royale, the only of author Ian Flemming's original James Bond books to have never been adapted into a screenplay for the film franchise, as its rights were purchased in 1967 to make a spoof of the film series rather than a real Bond movie. The choice of Craig for such a famous and well-loved character had some audiences scratching their heads, but those who'd taken a look at the actor's long and impressive filmography were ready to see him take on the job. To say his debut as Bond was a success is an understatment: Released in late 2006, Casino Royale quickly rung up the highest box-office tally of any Bond film, and it garnered the best reviews the franchise had seen in years. Audiences and critics alike became Craig loyalists. While Craig downed martinis as the silver screen's most enduring super spy, the hype sadly overshadowed the fact that the veteran actor continued to take risks on the big screen with such efforts as Renaissance, a visually stunning sci fi thriller that was somewhat remniscent of director Robert Rodriguez's acclaimed 2005 action entry Sin City. Also, before Casino Royale's release, Craig would appear as the killer Perry Smith in the "other Capote movie," Infamous. It wasn't until 2007 that the actor started seeing his newfound stock reflected in giant Hollywood productions, including The Invasion and The Golden Compass. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide