Gerard Butler reveals softer side in How to Train Your Dragon 2 interview

We all know Gerard Butler as the ultimate man’s man, a testosterone-stuffed hardnut who probably eats four T-bone steaks for breakfast. But it appears that voicing the father of lead character Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon 2 has brought out the softer side to the 44-year-old Scot.

Butler has been talking to Scotland Now about his troubled family life and how it affected one particular scene in the new film where Butler’s character, Stoick the Vast, is reunited with his long-lost wife.

“He is remembering the days when they were falling in love and it’s a very moving scene,” he told the website. “It is interesting for me because for 14 years I didn’t see my own father. I didn’t even know he was alive. I just understood that scene from the second they gave it to me. I knew what to do.”

You can read more of the interview here, where Butler talks about his impoverished upbringing and his emotional reunion with his father when he was 16 years old.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 flies into Cineworld cinemas on 10th July.