Which actor plays King Leonidas in the 2006 film "300"?

Gerard Butler plays King Leonidas in the 2006 film 300. Butler portrays Leonidas as the determined Spartan king who leads 300 elite warriors against the vastly larger Persian force at Thermopylae.

Directed by Zack Snyder, 300 adapts Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s 1998 Dark Horse Comics series. The film is a highly stylized historical fantasy, using dramatic slow motion, exaggerated visuals, and comic-book framing to retell the Battle of Thermopylae from a Spartan perspective. Butler’s performance helped make Leonidas one of the defining action characters of the 2000s.

Historically, Leonidas I was a real king of Sparta and commanded a Greek force at Thermopylae in 480 BCE. The movie compresses events and heightens many details: the famous “300” were Spartan citizens within a larger Greek coalition, and the Persian army’s size remains debated by historians. The film’s Leonidas is therefore based on history but is not a literal documentary portrayal.

Eric Bana, Clive Owen, and Russell Crowe are plausible action-film distractors, but none plays Leonidas. Gerard Butler is the actor associated with the role in Snyder’s 300.