the anesthetic that finally killed him. it took him to the valley of death and did not bring him back. >> this is "piers morgan tonight." gerard butler's career took off in his role in "300." he's played everything from leading man to action heroes and animated. his latest is a searing performance in "machine gun preacher." gerard butler joins me now. jerry, i think you're preferred to be known. americans call you gerard. which we can't have that. you're irish descent, but you're scottish, aren't you? >> that's right. >> scotland they never say gerard. >> they say jerad. >> i think we should insist on this pronunciation. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> let's start with your physique, because you look, unfortunately -- you're looking great, but i want to show you, luckily, a picture from last year where you weren't in such a great shape. all of the women have been going crazy. i prefer the gerard on the left, you know why, it's more like me, it's more like me. so that men like me look to you in the shot on the left and thought fantastic, then to our utter horror you emerged from a soccer match in britain on the right looking like that. >> kind of crazy. >> sort of a demented he-man. how did you go from me to the one on the right? >> well, that was actually two years ago, by the way, that one. that came as a bit of a shock. what i do when i trained for "300," i'm very obsessive about how i train. i was doing six hours a day. i trained with two different trainers. a body building trainer. >> six hours a day? >> yeah. then i trained with the stunt guys for two hours at a time. when i was filming, i literally had somebody come down with the weights and i would pump before each shot. i got extremely big. in the same way when i'm not working i found myself at times getting forcibly into coca-cola, dessert. i think that was at a time when i -- actually, that was me -- i saw those photos and that changed my life, actually. >> really? tell me about that. >> i was on holiday with a buddy down in barbados. and i just finished -- i forget what movie it was, but i trained pretty heavily for the movie and was taking some time off, and i noticed i was eating more and more and kept thinking i should be careful. and then i was actually getting in the water, and i looked over and i saw this boat in the distance. and i saw the -- >> you thought no! >> even i didn't realize how awful it was going to look or how big of a -- >> can i remind you, your idea of awful is my idea of reasonably good. so you've got to be careful with your language here. >> for me. awful for me. considering where i'd been, you know. >> so you were properly upset by it. >> in truth, it didn't look great, didn't kill me, but it did lead me to be a little more cognizant of what i was eating. >> when that second picture came out, which is an extraordinary image, what did you feel then, a kind of sense of absolute euphoria? >> no because i look ridiculous. look at my hair. look at the tongue. i look like a mad man. >> no one is looking at your hair, it's the six-pack. extraordinary. i want to take you back to scotland, because you grew up in scotland. you were supposed to be a lawyer. this was the plan. you were going to be a good, conscientious scottish lawyer. you became a trainee lawyer. incredibly you became probably one of the only people in history to get fired as a trainee lawyer. that's pretty difficult. >> i don't think it's ever happened before, actually. >> you went to the edenburg festival. the famous arts festival in scotland and got wrecked, right? >> this is a great start to an interview, here you are fat, now let's talk about the time you were fired. >> is it any consolation, we'll come to the bit you get jailed in the l.a. county jail. this is the good stuff. this will start descending, trust me. >> taxi. taxi. >> so here you are, fired as a trainee lawyer. what does your mom say to you in that moment? the game plan has just dramatically changed. >> she wasn't there in that moment, thank god. there was a room full of lawyers. if i could have had her there, have a word with them. even then it would have been too late for her to have gotten me out of that. in truth it was actually a very sad moment for me at that moment. i don't come from a family of lawyers. it was a big deal that i was going to law school. my mom, you know, talking about irish mothers, very proud, my boy's going to be a lawyer, then one week before qualifying i had to call her and say i've just been fired, and it was a -- it was a tough moment in my life, it was tough for her to hear that it just happened to her son. then in the next breath she said what are you going to do, i said well, i'm going to move down to london. i know i have no money. i'm going to become an actor. i'm going to get my [ bleep ] together. >> was the problem, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, but was the problem before you got fired, you'd been to america for a year, i think, with some irish mates and were living in venice beach, right? >> yeah. whole gang of you. and you basically drank yourselves into oblivion for a year. is it true? >> this is funny, who have you been talking to? >> it's sort of been researched. >> i was 21. i had taken a summer in america when i was younger, but this was the end of my honors law degree. i came over just for the summer. then i decided i was going to take a year out. i knew when i got back things were going to get a lot more serious. in truth, it was covering up something a little darker, i knew i was headed totally down the wrong track. i wasn't doing what i wanted to do. >> you had this thing inside you burning away, the crater spot. before we get to the crater spot, i do want to know about the night in the l.a. county jail. >> okay. well, what happened -- [ laughter ] >> is the memory flooding back? you were actually shackled, right? >> i was shackled, yeah. what was it? what was it, i think it was -- i think it was drunk driving or something silly. i was kind of out of control in those days. >> was that a wake-up moment? >> that was a wake-up moment, yeah. but then in truth i had a few of them. i could write a book about moments like that. >> we've had had moments like this. don't worry about it. i don't think you're alone. you're not the first guy with irish blood with a few drinks in his life. what i like about it is it leads up to you have this wake-up moment then. you go back. you have another one when you don't get through the law thing. the whole sort of plan for you, which was going to be, i think, pretty dull, you were going to lead possibly -- i think you've said this. you were going to lead this life as a smalltown lawyer in scotland. it's not that exciting. >> what i realized was up until that point, i had that energy in me, but i didn't know what to do with it. the one thing it was not made for was a career as a lawyer. can you imagine sitting in that office and feeling that pulse? >> do you ever wonder what may have happened if you'd passed your law degree, if you'd passed exams, if you'd become a lawyer? >> yeah, i don't think i would have -- i don't think i'd be alive today to be honest, and i don't say that lightly. i was living my life in a very unhealthy way, and i needed to be told that it wasn't happening. i needed to be stopped, because otherwise i'd just have kept going thinking i could get away with it. so, no, i don't -- one, i would not have been fulfilling my purpose. i wouldn't have -- god knows where i would have ended up. >> what was your mother's honest opinion when you fled to london away from this career that she had mapped out, as you say, tough catholic mom. suddenly her boy is supposed to be this well-groomed lawyer is racing off to be an actor in london. what does she think? >> i think she just was -- threw up her hands and thought, god, i've created a monster in you. >> when the monster thrived and succeeded and ever more succeeded, did her view change quite quickly? did she realize it was what you were supposed to be doing? >> yeah, she did. by the way, i'm not giving her fair credit. she wrote me the most beautiful letter actually when i went to london. and i didn't expect it, because my mother and i, we're very, very close, very intense relationship, and she wouldn't let me go on anything, so i expected her to be -- to be way more heavy handed with what had happened. but she wrote me this letter that said, you know what, i just want you to know i support you in whatever you do as long as it makes you happy. i'll be there for you. >> what does she make of what's happened to you? >> she loves it, she loves it. it gives her a chance to do her little performing thing. oh, my boy. oh, my son. she claims she doesn't, but wherever she goes, it's like, do you know gerard butler? well, that's my son. she'll find a way. she'll find a way to get that into any conversation. >> let's take a short break. when we come back, i want to get into the movie of yours. which is an absolute tour deforce. i saw whoopi goldberg describe it. she said to her audience on "the view," go see it. i second that. we'll discuss that after the break. 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[ chuckles ] ah...that's good, that's good. that's, uh, that's...fun. it is, after all, a celebration for all of us. [ male announcer ] we are insurance. ♪ we are farmers ♪ bum, ba-da-bum, bum, bum, bum ♪ aspercreme breaks the grip, with maximum-strength medicine and no embarrassing odor. break the grip of pain with aspercreme. hey, get up, let's go. let's get a move on, get up. hey, come on, get up. >> what are you doing? >> let's go, get up. they ain't sleeping out here. tell them, they're coming inside. come on, get up. let's go. >> sam. sam. there are too many. we can't help them all. >> well, i can take these ones here. >> gerard butler's latest movie, "machine gun preacher." this is serious, intense. it's visceral. it's raw. it's everything you would want in a powerful movie. you're all over this, you're a star in it, you produced it. this is a labor of love for you. why this? >> it's the way you introduced the movie is the very same reason i wanted to do it. i read the script and thought this is such a remarkable story of one man's journey just into the unknown where he really took on the world. i loved all the themes in it, religion, you know, just had a powerful belief in god, fighting one's own demons, and this situation in africa. which so few people know really, really what's going on and what continues to go on. >> very quickly sum up what the film is about. >> so, i play a man called sam childers who was a drug addict, you know, violent man who lived in pennsylvania who finally got his life together, found god, went down to do some missionary work in africa where he witnessed atrocities in sudan, and it changed his life, and he ended up, one, becoming a preacher, but two, fighting to build an orphanage to take in these orb -- orphan kids. also he started fighting the rebel forces who were kidnapping these children to bring them back into the orphanage. he's kind of got a bible in one hand and a machine gun in the other while still trying to have a family back in pennsylvania and run a church that he built there and still dealing with his own demons. because he's a dark soul. >> god-fearing bad boy sees the light. parallels as you were filming? are you thinking -- i mean, very different story line. but, you know? >> sometimes you read a script and you don't know why, you just think i connect with this, then it's almost embarrassing to say it out loud that i would feel parallels with that. because, of course, what he's achieved is so much more than me. i didn't go in and start fighting in a war. but at the same time, i felt a lot of parallels. then the parallels, you try and force those parallels on to that character as well. a bad boy who then found his purpose in life. >> it's a cliche question, but did it make you reassess yourself, your sense of what's important in life? >> absolutely. when you see these kids, and they have nothing and they abide by a very simple way of living, and yet -- and they truly have nothing. yet they look at you and it's just about you. it's only you and what and who you are. there's nothing gets in between that, and you think what do i really need, what do i really need except some simple beliefs and some friendships? without a doubt. and it also reaffirms your faith in humanity as to where we could be even with nothing. >> did it reaffirm your faith in god? you were raised a catholic. are you a strong catholic? are you very religious? >> i was brought up a catholic. i'm not a practicing catholic. i'd say i'm more spiritual. i do believe in god. i kind of believe we all apply it to ourselves on an individual basis. we try our best. but this movie without a doubt, i mean, one thing that i've experienced in my life with the changes that i've had and changes that i've witnessed in other people is where when you are backed and have this belief in a god, what you can manifest with that. where you can go with that. this is a perfect example. i've had it in my life as well where i've seen just -- whether it was myself, the joy that i've had and happiness in my life when i'm in a moment where i'm truly connected with something higher. this is a perfect example here of a man who -- just the power and intensity of his belief in a god. >> watch another clip from the movie here. >> they burnt it down. nothing left. >> where are you? it's a test, sam. >> i can't do it no more, lynn. it's over. >> sam? >> yeah. >> can you hear me? >> yeah, i can hear you. >> them kids have had their whole lives burnt to the ground and worse, how many of them do you see giving up? >> when you finish scenes like that, how do you unwind after? can you or does it hang with you for a long time? >> it hangs with you for awhile, and with this movie there was very much a cumulative affect, because from day one you find yourself playing more and more of these scenes where you're either having some kind of a breakdown via your drugs or family pressures. then, of course, in africa where it just -- it went to such -- such huge proportions of depression and despair that after a while it became -- this movie was definitely a journey into darkness for me. >> do you feel slightly mentally scarred by what you had to see? >> yeah, i do. yeah, i was amazed that i struggled with it like i did. i mean, i definitely had an emotional reaction to it. and i would during the movie. sometimes i'd just sit down and i would just start -- i would just start crying. or just find myself in a really -- it reminded me of places that i'd been in my darker days when i was younger when i thought -- when i thought life couldn't get much worse, really. >> there's a remarkably powerful kind of moral divide issue that's raised by sam and real-life sam asking an audience one question. i'll read it to you. i want to ask everyone if your child or family member was abducted today, if a madman came in, terrorist came in and abducted your family or child and if i said to you i can bring your child home, does it matter how i bring him home? fascinating question. have you asked yourself that question? >> yeah. >> what would be the answer? >> i mean, i would give anybody free power to do whatever they wanted to if it was somebody -- if it was a family member of mine. and i myself would do it. i think with -- if somebody were to take a family member of mine, there's nothing that i wouldn't do to get them back. and there have been all these debates, and i love that. i love that this movie, it brings that up. this controversy. can you put wrong against wrong, violence against violence, and who does he think he is to go in there and decide he's the arbiter of all this. as you say, this is an insane situation. really anybody -- there isn't anybody who could say anything good about them and what they do. they have no political agenda. they go into villages -- >> they have no morality. >> no morality, they kill everybody, ritualize killing, they rape, sexually enslave the women, they turn all the children into child soldiers. >> it's a remarkably powerful and important film. i hope everyone goes to see it, because it really does tell an extraordinary story. going to lighten the load a bit, come back and talk to you about a thing that may bring a smile to your face, i think, because it normally does. women. 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