By Alice Wyllie
Published on Sunday 30 December 2012 11:00
GERARD Butler has had a busy month. Dubai, Toronto, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Oslo. And Scotland.
He celebrated his 43rd birthday last month and knew he had to do it in the motherland, so he made a stopover on his way back to the US, where he lives between New York and LA.
Born and raised in Paisley, for Butler, Scotland is “a break” from a life lived 24/7, a place where he can “get out and breathe and be a part of the mountains, glens and lochs”. As such, he visits as often as he can, and today – a grey December morning in a bare hotel room in London – he can’t stop raving about a “magical” Highland trip he took in the summer.
“I just made it up as I went along,” he says excitedly. The adventure took him from a “haunted room” in Loch Lomond to Inverlochy Castle via various pitstops: “I was begging for a B&B at 1am in Plockton because everywhere was full and the barmaid ended up saying, ‘well, I have a B&B in another town if you want to come and stay there?’ It was nuts. A lot of my best trips have been those ones in Scotland where you never quite know they’re going to happen.”
He recalls another: “I was on my way to the airport and it just felt too soon. It was really breaking my heart. You know that feeling that only thinking about your country can ever give you, those butterflies?” He puts his hand on his heart.
“I was on the phone with my agent saying, ‘why am I leaving?’ And they said, ‘well don’t leave. Stay’. So I got to Edinburgh Airport and I carried on driving. I drove right through to Perth, went into an outdoors store and bought a tent and walking boots and spent the next few days camping and walking.”
Start him on the green green grass of home and he’s got plenty to say.
READ MORE: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/film/gerard-butler-having-a-ball-1-2712144http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/film/gerard-butler-having-a-ball-1-2712144
