Gerard Butler on his late mum and wanting Cate Blanchett for the How To Train Your Dragon sequel

How To Train Your Dragon star Gerard Butler opens up about how his late mother shaped his life – and why he wants Oscar-winning Aussie actor Cate Blanchett for the sequel.

After voicing Stoick the Vast in three hit animated How To Train Your Dragon movies, Gerard Butler thought he’d seen the last of the hulking, grandly bearded Viking chief.

But when director Dean DeBlois set about making the new live action version of the much loved kids’ adventure, he knew that he wanted to the Scottish actor’s booming voice and manly gravitas back to anchor what is at its heart a father-son story.

After some wrangling with availability and strikes, DeBlois got his man and Butler suited up to play the hot-tempered, dragon-hating, axe-swinging warrior as the only returning cast member.

But animating a character to fit the moniker of Stoick the Vast is one thing – having a real actor fill those mighty boots is entirely another, necessitating an enormous, complex costume that took an hour to put on every day. But was he also required to hit the all-you-can buffet to live up to the character’s name?

“No, that was all costume,” Butler says with a laugh over Zoom call.

“I actually lost weight making this movie because we were in Belfast and it was winter and everybody was freezing. In my normal clothes I was cold but I had seven layers on and then they put a dead sheep on my back and that was a lot of weight. It was 90 pounds and it was very well insulated and I was soaking wet every day.

“You could have wrung my costume out, so I was losing weight. While I was playing Stoick the Vast, I was becoming Gerry the Not So Vast.”

Gerard Butler as Stoick in the new, live-action How to Train Your Dragon, written and directed by Dean DeBlois.

Having voiced the character in three feature films, which made a combined $2.6 billion at the box office, Butler says there was some muscle memory in playing Stoick but he also saw it as chance to reinvent it, particularly with The Black Phone star Mason Thames taking over from Jay Baruchel as his son, Hiccup.

“It felt like a chance to reinvent, go deeper, give a lot more layering and nuance in the bigger aspects, and especially in the smaller, quieter moments,” he says. “There is much to be said in the live action, in the moments of silence from this big, powerful man and see what he’s having to hold back.”

From the first time he played Stoick – a single parent who struggles to relate to the nerdy, un-warrior-like son who desperately wants to impress him – Butler says he drew on his own relationship with this mother.

“I grew up with only my mother, so, weirdly, a lot of mine was in reverse,” Butler says. “My understanding of Stoick was also knowing where to play against parts of Hiccup that I understood in myself, having been a kid who was one of three and was always trying to be the best in my mother’s eyes. She was my mum and my dad and I feel like Stoick is really Hiccup’s mum and dad.”

Butler lost his mother earlier this year and touchingly paid tribute to her at a recent premiere of How To Train Your Dragon, and he says the most important lessons he got from her were compassion and tolerance.

Mason Thames, Gerard Butler and Nico Parker at the How to Train Your Dragon Immersive Experience Screening in London this month. Picture: Lia Toby/Getty Images

“At school when I could see bullying going on, I would often be the one to stand up for that person because I felt their pain so much,” he says. “I think in that respect, my mum always taught me to make a stand and be courageous when you saw somebody being hard done by.”

Keen fans of the franchise will know that Stoick’s wife and Hiccup’s mother, Valka, thought to have been killed by dragons in the first film, is in fact alive. Voiced by Oscar-winning Aussie actor Cate Blanchett, the character was a key part of the second animated film. Given the predictions that the live-action version is also going to do monster business, a sequel could well be on the cards.

Butler is coy as to whether Blanchett might also be tempted to return – it’s not his call, he reasonably says – but says he knows she has already seen the new film with her family and loved it.

“She said she had the best time,” says Butler. “I think everybody would love for her to be in a movie – she’s Cate Blanchett for God’s sake. What could she not bring to a role?

“It was amazing to have her as Valka in the second movie. I never got a chance to meet her because we weren’t in the recording booth at the same time, so I would love the opportunity to actually, in a live action version, get to play some scenes with her as my long lost love.”

Having shot the movies Nim’s Island and Gods Of Egypt here, Butler is no stranger to these shores and he says he loves the Australian sense of humour and passion for sport.

Gerard Butler would love to act with Cate Blanchett in a live action How To Train Your Dragon seqeul. Picture: AAP Image/Joel Carrett

“I just find myself very happy when I’m down there,” he says.

“It’s one of the most beautiful countries. I remember going to Sydney, thinking I love that. Then I went to Melbourne, going, ‘no, I love Melbourne more’. Then I made a movie in Sydney and I was like ‘No, I love Sydney more’. I was on the Gold Coast, I’ve been to Uluru. I’ve been all over and I just love their outlook on life.”

While he might not be able to make it here for the coming British and Irish Lions tour, the rugby-mad actor, whose rousing ‘this is Sparta’ speech in 300 has become a much-memed calling card, says he’s recorded a team speech that will be shown as part of the broadcast.

“They are going to show it for Britain so I’m practising my speech right now,” he says. “Come on, Lions.”

How To Train Your Dragon is in cinemas now.