Gerard Butler Interview: Emotional Scene Hits Home For 'How To Train Your Dragon 2' Star (Audio)

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Gerard Butler recounts in an interview how a scene from the sequel to HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON reminded him of the time he met his absentee father after fourteen years of thinking he was dead. Listen below.

Gerard Butler returns to voice the character of Stoick in HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2. In the animated film, the Viking chief Stoick and his son Hiccup reunite with the matriarch of the family after years of presuming she was dead at the claws of a dragon. Hiccup finds his mother Valka (voiced by Cate Blanchett) by accident which leads to an emotional scene between the mother and son, and later the reunion between Stoick and his long-lost love also stirs up some tears. More so for one of the stars of the movie. Gerard Butler can relate to meeting someone who he thought was gone forever.

At a press conference in Los Angeles with his co-stars (Kit Harrington, Craig Ferguson, Djimon Hounsou), Butler opened up about how the scene stirred up old emotions of the time he met his absentee father for the first time after a decade.

"I didn't see my father for fourteen years. I didn't even know he was alive and he turned up out of the blue."

He goes on to tell how he arrived home one day, and his step-father told him his father wanted to meet with him at a nearby restaurant. When he arrive to the packed restaurant, he says he "literally was looking at men wondering 'is that my dad?' "He was the weirdest guy in the restaurant," he jokes.

Butler says when he watched the scenes between the Viking family for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival, it brought up those old memories. "It's so emotional," he says. The theme of separation and abandonment in HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 really proved "profound" for the Scottish actor, but the Dreamworks movie should hit home for a lot of people, not just him, according to the actor.

"Visually it's incredible, but its' the story itself, and it goes to deeper and darker places that most animated movie wouldn't dare go."

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When he was voicing his part in HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2, he recalls thinking that Stoick is too understanding of Valka's decision because as Gerard Butler he wouldn't be so easy on her for abandoning her child and husband.

"As Gerry, I wanted to say, 'Where were you? What the hell? Not even a hello. Not even an 'I'm alright.'"

Regardless of what he brings to the table from his own personal life, Butler believes HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 is a good lesson in second chances and rekindling lost loves.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 open June 13, 2014.

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