Gerard Butler had no idea he had any singing ability before he was cast in the lead role in 2004’s “Phantom of the Opera”

Gerard Butler’s long career in the movies started in a decidedly different place than where he (mostly) ended up. These days, he’s associated with characters like gruff detectives, action heroics, and — for a time — a go-to romantic comedy lead. These roles pull from a seemingly real place, given what Butler is like in real life.

But that’s not what Butler’s first major role pulled from at all. He played an iconically strange recluse. He brought a sense of dramatic stage gravitas to the big screen. And he sang!

Gerard Butler’s first major role was in ‘The Phantom of the Opera’

The 300 star started his acting career in 1997, but didn’t break out until many years later. According to IMDb, 2000 horror film Dracula 2000 was the moment when online fandom started to take notice of Butler’s unique allure. But Phantom of the Opera in 2004 was the moment that solidified him as one of Hollywood’s go-to options for a strong leading man.

He’d later become known for his turn as the brutal Spartan warrior King Leonidas, and later for his turn as a seedy detective in Den of Thieves.

Today, that Joel Schumacher-directed version of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s famous musical isn’t often referenced as a definitive take. But at the time, it proved to studios that Butler was willing to go for challenging, high-profile roles — even if they were well outside his comfort zone, Slash Film reports.

Gerard Butler had no professional training as a singer

The singing in Schumacher’s Phantom of the Opera broke with the then-standard practice of dubbing over actors with more accomplished vocalists during singing scenes. Butler and co-star Emmy Rossum instead handled vocals entirely on their own. It’s especially impressive given the difficulty of the original stage material.

Rossum, just 17 at the start of filming, had lifelong formal training as a singer. It wasn’t her primary craft, but she was certainly polished enough to earn her role as the lead. Butler, though, had a slightly more improbable path to landing his role in the adaptation.

He talked to Today recently about his vocal training experience while promoting his latest film, Plane. “Suddenly, I’m in front of the Professor of Music at the Royal Academy of Music. I said, ‘tell me, am I wasting my time?’ And we finished, and she said, ‘you can absolutely do this, you need to learn the rules, but you can do this.’ So that was awesome.”

The actor’s latest film ‘Plane’ likely won’t involve much singing

Gerard Butler attends the Premiere of “Plane” I Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Butler and Plane co-star Mike Coulter chatted up Today about their shared love for singing. But it only popped up behind the scenes for their new action-thriller. The movie itself looks to be a raucous, tense, entertaining ride.

Butler plays pilot Brodie Torrance, who navigates an emergency landing on a remote island occupied by a violent militia. With the passengers of the plane quickly taken hostage, Torrance takes drastic action.

He frees convicted murderer Louis Gaspare, played by an instantly charismatic Coulter. The two embark on a dangerous buddy adventure to save the passengers of that ill-fated flight.

It’s the type of movie that was teetering towards a direct-to-video fate for years, after a rocky development period starting in 2016.

These days, with interest in thrilling action films like Top Gun: Maverick driving massive box office receipts, Plane may actually be landing at the perfect time. With Butler operating in peak action movie mode, it should make for a great return to theatrical form for the action-thriller genre.