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Gerard Butler is showing gratitude for the way How to Train Your Dragon honored his late mom, Margaret Butler.
In an interview with UK-based radio station Magic Radio Wednesday, June 11, the Scottish actor, 55, shared how touched he was that director Dean DeBlois dedicated the live-action remake of the originally animated franchise to his mother, who died in February at 81.
“I was so excited for her to see it, but I had a feeling she wasn’t going to make it. So Dean very kindly dedicated the movie to her,” Butler, who voiced Stoick in the franchise’s animated films, said.
“If Stoick had a mum, that would have been my mum,” Butler added. “She was an amazing woman, but she was strong, she was fiery and she was graceful and she was beautiful.”
The 300 actor also shared how his mother knew, “since I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor.”
Universal Pictures
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Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in an article published Thursday, June 12, DeBlois shared that he brought the idea to Universal Pictures, so he could surprise Butler with the dedication.
“I knew that the loss of his mother was a deeply felt wound and that he was having a tough time recovering from it,” DeBlois said. “So to honor her with a dedication in the credits just seemed like the right thing to do in that moment.”
Universal Pictures
How to Train Your Dragon follows Hiccup (Mason Thames), the son of Butler’s Stoick, who has grown up in a society that hunts and kills dragons. But when he happens upon Toothless, an injured Night Fury dragon, he nurses the creature back to health, forming a close friendship with him that ends up changing his village forever.
The film also stars Nico Parker as Astrid, Hiccup’s love interest, and Nick Frost as Gobber the Belch, the village blacksmith and Stoick’s friend.
How to Train Your Dragon is out in theaters Friday, June 13.
