Thanks to his role in the enormously successful 300, Gerard Butler is fast becoming cinema’s next big action hero. But he’s not ready to permanently move into Machoville just yet…

“I have done other films like Dear Frankie and PS I Love You, but in some ways the bigger, more macho roles that I do stand out more,” says Butler, who’s currently filming the action film Game. “I do a lot of different roles, but those 300/Gladiator style films are just the ones that stick more in your memory - for good or bad reasons.” 

As soon as he read the script for Nim’s Island, an adventure film about a young girl and her father who live on a deserted island in the South Pacific, Butler signed onboard. He considered a family film the perfect way to follow up the brutal adults-only action of 300.

The actor says: “It was so very charming and fun and adventurous - and I was very excited by the challenge of playing two characters at once.”

Yes, further demonstrating just how versatile an actor he is, Butler plays dual roles in the film! He’s Nim’s brilliant and creative scientist father Jack who finds himself far from home AND the debonair, courageous fictional adventurer Alex Rover, whom Nim hopes can help save them.

“Gerry really inspired us to cast him in both roles,” explains director Mark Levin, “because with him as both Jack and Alex it seemed so right and appropriate. He has the range and the charisma to be able to do justice to both characters, to show how they’re really two sides of the same coin, and that really enhances the storybook quality of the movie. We also loved that there’s a strong tradition of this in classic stories. For example, in Peter Pan, one actor often plays both Wendy’s father and Captain Hook.”

Butler loved playing both roles equally, declaring he found Jack just as interesting a character as the more adventurous Alex.

“Jack is a marine biologist with a young daughter and a broken heart,” Butler explains. “He’s a quirky character who’s mostly passionate about plankton, but he goes through something very difficult and emotional trying to get back to his daughter. Then there’s Alex, who’s the classical definition of an action hero - an Indiana Jones type. He’s bigger-than-life and full of energy and passion, but he’s also a man who essentially only lives in others’ imaginations, so there’s a lot of humour to him, and the trick is also that he is really the alter ego of Jodie Foster’s character, Alexandra. He’s the one who has to push her to the more courageous side of life.”