Robert Downey Jr. personally asked Gerard Butler to make more action movies
Robert Downey Jr. once personally asked Gerard Butler to make more action movies.
During a recent interview for UPROXX, the Scottish actor was asked about his connection to the genre, having starred as Secret Service agent Mike Banning in Olympus Has Fallen and its sequels, as well as the likes of 2018's Hunter Killer and 2022's Last Seen Alive.
Reflecting on making his new movie Plane, Gerard recalled how the Iron Man star emailed him in 2013 to tell him to keep making fast-paced action-thriller projects.
"Well, it's funny because Robert Downey Jr. wrote me the nicest email after Olympus Has Fallen," he stated. "This is the same vibe. He's like, 'We need more of these movies.' These are the movies, when I was in New York as a kid, and people would shout at the screen and throw things and be like, 'No!' and applaud and cheer. And I think that's what this movie is, it's a throwback to that, where literally you're in the energy of the group and everybody's either terrified or cheering you on."
In Plane, Gerard plays a pilot who makes an emergency landing in hostile territory.
But unlike some of his previous films, the 53-year-old opts to keep his native accent.
"I think it was like 10 years, I hadn't been able to do a Scottish accent. And now I've done two or three in a row. And there's definitely something, a relief, when I can do it in my own. I don't have to worry about the accent," added Gerard.
Plane, also starring Mike Colter and Tony Goldwyn, opens in U.S. cinemas on Friday.
