GERARD BUTLER might be a Hollywood hotshot who can demand an estimated $15m a movie, but he’s far from your typical film star.

“I always try to remember that it’s just me, just little ol’ Gerry, I’m just a dude,” says the 43-year-old Scot, who plays a washed-up footballer in his new movie Playing For Keeps.

Back in 2000, and just two weeks after arriving in Hollywood, he was cast as the lead in the TV movie Attila.

Since then he’s appeared in films spanning all genres, portraying the hulking King Leonidas in 300, the masked lead in the musical Phantom Of The Opera, the cheeky boyfriend in rom-com PS I Love You, and a drug-dealing biker turned crusader in Machine Gun Preacher.

A no-nonsense Scot, he prides himself on being able to cut through the hype.

“Honestly, there are plenty of things I’m not good at, but I do think I’m a breath of fresh air for Hollywood,” he says.

“I’m not a guy who takes it all too seriously, who you’ll find stuck at the back of the VIP room surrounded by security at a party.”

He’s had a reputation as a bit of a ladies’ man. “I don’t hear so much of it now, but without a doubt a lot of it [my reputation] was deserved,”

says Butler, who’s now dating Romanian supermodel Madalina Ghenea, 24.

“In saying that, I’d say 80 per cent of who I was accused of having affairs with, like Jennifer Aniston (his co-star in 2010’s bomb The Bounty Hunter) was never true. But have I been a ladies’ man? Yeah, but I’m a dude.

He’s “a boy from Scotland who’s had fun in life,” he says.

“I’ve had a lot of luck, I’ve worked hard and I’ve enjoyed myself, you know, and I feel I’ve always been a gentleman and never set out to hurt anyone.

“I’m chatty, but it’s my gig.

I’m friendly, I’m warm and I’m charming and there’s a flirtatious way that you can have about you. That can be with guys as well. It just means you’re big and you’re gregarious.”

He’s really not so different from his Playing For Keeps alter ego George Dryer, a former Scottish football star who turns up in small-town America to try to rebuild his relationship with his son Lewis and ex Stacie, played by Jessica Biel.

After getting roped into teaching the local little league football team, his attempts to finally ‘grow up’ are thwarted by the gaggle of attractive ‘soccer mums’, including Catherine Zeta-Jones and Uma Thurman and an overzealous soccer dad played by Dennis Quaid.

“George is a guy who seems to bring chaos wherever he goes because women like him and men want to be him, but he’s not very centred and he doesn’t necessarily know how to handle all that,” explains Butler, also a producer on the film.

“It was originally a baseball movie and I was American but then I thought, ‘what am I thinking?’ What a chance to really allow for that fish out of water element.

“George is the guy who’s trying to start afresh, but doing it in a place where he’s befuddled by everybody.”

It wasn’t so different when Butler first moved to LA, having taken up acting after he was fired from a law firm.

“You jump into the antics, but at the same time you have a sense of humour about yourself in that world and spend a lot of time scratching your head about who people are and their attitudes towards life,” he says.

  •  Playing For Keeps (12A) is now showing in cinemas.