Gerard Butler details challenging transformation for 'How to Train Your Dragon'

Gerard Butler has revealed the long and hard process of transforming into his How to Train Your Dragon character Stoick the Vast.

Butler reprises his role from the animated version of the movie for the upcoming live-action.

The 55-year-old actor had to go through intense makeup and prosthetics process to become the large and bearded Stoick.

In an interview with ET, Gerard said that “it was incredible” to star in the live action version of How to Train Your Dragon.

“I’d always wondered, seeing the animated version what would it be like to be that size? Be that character and to live,” he noted.

The P.S. I Love You star was then asked if he grew his beard to play Stoick and he revealed that he didn’t.

“That was like five pieces of hell,” he said of the prosthetic beard. “That was a good three and a half hours just to be ready.”

He revealed earlier that the costume weighed 90 pounds, leading him to sweat under the layers even during the coldest days.

“I had seven layers, thick layers, and a thick beard, and then I had a kind of bearskin or wolfskin over it. It was heavy,” he told Collider.

“When I had my sword and my shield and the helmet, which was heavy, and all those layers with the clasps that went around, it was 90 pounds, my costume,” he continued.

“I was, in the middle of the coldest day, soaking wet from sweat inside because it was like a furnace in there,” Gerard Butler added.

How to Train Your Dragon bows in theaters on June 13, 2025.