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Gerard Butler was Born on November 13, 1969, in Glasgow,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).
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.
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. 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).
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.