‘How to Train Your Dragon’ is dedicated ‘to the loving memory’ of Gerard Butler’s late mom, Margaret Coll

Gone but never forgotten: How to Train Your Dragon ends with a touching tribute to Gerard Butler‘s late mom.

Audiences who stay through the very end of the credits for the film will see a note reading, “Dedicated to the loving memory of Margaret Coll.” The Scottish actor’s mother passed away in February at 81, according to PEOPLE.

Butler, who voiced the character of Viking Chief Stoick in the animated films and reprised the part in the new live-action remake, opened up about the surprise dedication in a new interview with UK-based radio station Magic Radio.

“I was so excited for her to see it, but I had a feeling she wasn’t going to make it. So Dean very kindly dedicated the movie to her,” Butler said, referring to writer-director Dean DeBlois.

“If Stoick had a mum, that would have been my mum,” Butler added. “She was an amazing woman, but she was strong, she was fiery, and she was graceful, and she was beautiful.”

The film, like the original 2010 animated hit of the same name, follows outcast Viking teen Hiccup (Mason Thames), who discovers he’s not like everyone else and cannot kill the dragons inhabiting the isle of Berk. He comes into his own and changes the fates of both Berk and dragons forever when he befriends one instead — the Night Fury Toothless — and learns their true ways.

Butler also opened up about why the film is so special to him, namely, that he relates to Hiccup’s story — though his mom was more supportive than Stoick is of his son’s interests.

“She wrote me the most beautiful letter, and she said, ‘Look son, end of the day, I want you to be happy, and I love you no matter what. And if this is what you want to do —'” he said, adding that she knew since Butler “was a kid” that he “wanted to be an actor.”

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“It’s this movie — it really is,” he continued. “But it’s the opposite, because I was doing something that I never really loved [before acting], never cared about, that didn’t show any of my uniqueness, and anyway to be honest, I felt that something else was going on, and she embraced that.”

For his part, DeBlois told The Hollywood Reporter that he wanted to surprise Butler with the dedication in the film.

“I knew that the loss of his mother was a deeply felt wound and that he was having a tough time recovering from it,” DeBlois said. “So to honor her with a dedication in the credits just seemed like the right thing to do in that moment.”

How to Train Your Dragon, which also stars Nico Parker, Nick Frost, Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, and Peter Serafinowicz, hits theaters Friday.