Source: Arena Magazine
Published in Arena: September 2003
Photographs: Dominik Gigler
Shot in Shooters. Buried alive in Wes Craven’s Dracula. Shot again in Fast Food. Drowned in Tommorow Never Dies. Poisoned in the historically inaccurate US TV mini-series, Attila. And, lest we forget, kicked to death while buggering a camel in Jewel Of The Sahara.
For the past six years, Gerard Butler has made a living out of dying.
Yet whether his $2million appearance as Lara Croft’s Hardman lover in this month’s Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (and his upcoming lead in Joel Schumacher’s The Phantom of the Opera) will finally break this tradition, Butler refuses to say. Instead the 33-year-old-Scot would rather recall what he refers to as “one of my more enjoyable scenes – rolling around on the floor with Angelina Jolie”.
“Of course, you’re thinking, ‘This job rocks,’ because we were really tearing into each other,” says Butler, “but Croft and I are supposed to be extreme people, so where most people go for a walk in the park, we’ll go and wrestle tigers. Same with sex. Could you imagine the two of us having slow, loving, intimate sex? I’d end up with a bald patch on my head and claw marks down my back.”
