Born on November 13, 1969, in Glasgow, Butler is the youngest of Margaret and Edward Butler's three children; ... he has a sister and a brother. When Butler was barely six months outdated, his brood relocated to Montr??al, Canada, where his father undertook some failed business ventures. A year and a half later, Butler's parents divorced, and his mother took the children helpless to Scotland. He proverb his father instantly more when he was four years old, and then not again until he was 16. In the meantime, Butler grew up in his dam's hometown of Paisley, where he frequented a nearby movie theater. Enamored with acting, he convinced his mother to deliver him to auditions, done joining the Scottish Youth Theatre and playing a street urchin in Oliver! at the Kings Theatre in Glasgow. An exceptional student, Butler graduated at the top of his category. Hoping to satisfy his people and his teachers, who felt acting was an unrealistic employment choice, Butler enrolled in Glasgow University's law program.

He served as the president of the fashion's law society and earned an honor's degree. After finishing college, Butler took a year and a half off to live out in Los Angeles, where he appeared as an subsidiary in the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston conduit The Bodyguard (1992). He then traveled to Canada to be at his father's bedside as he succumbed to cancer. Abruptly after his father's eradication, Butler returned to Scotland to begin a two-year law traineeship in Edinburgh at one of the boondocks's top firms.

But he was bored and displeased as a legal practitioner, and quiet dreamed about performing. He went to mull over Trainspotting on-fake at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and knew he had made the fiendish calling choosing. Soon enough, Butler's unhappiness began to show in his responsibility, and his hard fired him with at most a week left in his training. Two days later, at age 25, he moved to London to begin his acting occupation. Butler took on a series of screwy jobs -- from waiting tables to demonstrating clockwork toys at a patronage show -- while looking for work as an actor. He was supposed to be serving as a casting helpmeet for the play Coriolanus at the Mermaid Acting when he ran into the accord's superintendent, actor Steven Berkoff, at a coffee bar and asked to read allowing for regarding a part. Impressed with the ex-barrister's moxie, Berkoff agreed and Butler secured his leading polished acting responsibility. While rehearsing for Coriolanus, he accompanied one of the other actors to an audition destined for the same stage adaptation of Trainspotting he had seen in Edinburgh and landed the command part of Objective Renton.

In 1997, with his theater employment solidly established, Butler made his noteworthy-home screen introduction opposing Billy Connolly and Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown. Sometime later, he had returned to the film's shooting site, Taymouth Fortress, after a picnic when he saw a stripling drowning in the about River Tay. Butler dove into the water and saved the boy.

The actor received a Certificate of Intrepidity from the Royal Humane Company for his selfless enactment. That but year, he earned a unsatisfactory speaking quarter as a disobedient guy in the Fetters veil Tomorrow Under no circumstances Dies before spoofing ex-Wet Wetness Wet singer Marti Pellow for the 1998 series The Immature Himself's Lodestar to Becoming a Rock Star. Butler finished out the '90s by means of appearing in the television comedy Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, as well as returning to the stage to appear opposite Sheila Gish and Rachel Weisz in Suddenly, Form Summer in London's West End. Butler began the new millennium with supporting parts in the gangster movie Shooters (2000) and the battling drama Harrison's Flowers (2000).

He then simultaneously landed the considerable-a packet title roles in Wes Craven's Dracula 2000 (2000) and the USA television film Attila (2001). Produced sooner than the creators of The Mummy franchise, Attila chronicled the sprightliness of the eponymous fifth century barbarian and co-starred veteran actors Tim Curry and Powers Boothe. It also re-teamed Butler with his Coriolanus manager, Berkoff, who played his uncle in the film. The hype that surrounded both Dracula 2000 and Attila was fueled through CNN's announcement that Butler was the frontrunner to replace Hole Brosnan as the next James Fetters.

The following months, still, were anticlimactic for Butler. Dracula 2000 bombed at the box place and Attila, albeit united of the year's highest-rated boob tube miniseries, proved to be forgettable. The rumors surrounding his involvement with 007 were quickly quelled when Brosnan announced that he was staying on for at least two more Handcuffs films, and the series' producers never contacted Butler. Purposeful to bewilder aid on his feet, Butler signed on with a new means.

He returned to British television for ITV's miniseries The Jury (2002), which also featured Derek Jacobi and Antony Sher, while simultaneously filming a r“le as Christian Bale's dragon-slaying best adherent in the special-effects spectacle Reign of Light a fire under (2002). He then quickly landed a supporting role in Renny Harlin's Mindhunters with Val Kilmer and LL Cool J, but pulled out of the stand out to play the principal in Richard Donner's long-awaited adaptation of Michael Crichton's win out over-selling novel Timeline (2003). Butler also turned heads as Angelina Jolie's hunky love interest in the supplement Lara Croft Burial-chamber Raider: The Cradle of Life that same year. Though, to this concerning in his career, Butler had no uncertainty displayed immense talent as an actor, the films he had appeared in had almost steadily frustrated in terms of confine-purpose returns.

In 2004, that disheartening trend continued as Butler donned the famous conceal of the disfigured musical genius made average on the produce by actor Michael Crawford in the big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, with subsequent roles in The Game of Their Lives and Beowulf & Grendel doing little to lengthen his international recognizability. Nearby 2006, it seemed that Butler was finally poised to weaken large, and as he prepared to usher the soldiers of Sparta in battle against the overwhelming forces of the Persian Empire in Day-spring of the Indifferent director Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's fashionable vivid 300, it appeared as if he was determined to do so in style.