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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Gerard Butler

Scottish actor and film producer (born 1969)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 21, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Gerard James Butler is a Scottish actor and film producer. After studying law, he turned to acting in the mid-1990s with small roles in productions such as Mrs Brown (1997), the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and Tale of the Mummy (1998). In 2000, he starred as Count Dracula in the gothic horror film Dracula 2000. He played Attila the Hun in the miniseries Attila (2001), then appeared in the films Reign of Fire (2002) and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003) before starring in the science fiction film Timeline (2003). He played Erik, The Phantom in Joel Schumacher's 2004 musical The Phantom of the Opera.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Gerard Butler” as scottish actor and film producer (born 1969). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1997, 1998, 2000, 2001—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Gerard, Butler and Scottish can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as scottish actor and film producer (born 1969). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2001.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gerard Butler”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gerard Butler primary sources, Gerard Butler archive and Gerard research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Gerard Butler”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Gerard Butler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.