He’s Playing Elvis Presley. But Who Is Austin Butler?

He sent the one-consider recording to Luhrmann. Within days, Butler, who life in Los Angeles, experienced been summoned to the director’s home in New York. “From the moment he walked in, he was soulful, spiritual, kind — just amazing,” Luhrmann claimed.

Butler still didn’t fairly have the section. That modified after Luhrmann asked him to accomplish renditions of Elvis hits like “Suspicious Minds,” “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Heartbreak Hotel.” They examine lines from the script, way too. “He was also carrying out these a best Southern accent,” Luhrmann explained. “I don’t forget asking one particular of my guys, ‘Where in Texas does he occur from?’ And I was instructed, ‘Oh, no — he’s from Anaheim.”

Butler, who nonetheless speaks with an Elvis twang, grew up in close proximity to Disneyland. His father, David, functions in professional true estate, and his mother, Lori, ran a day care from their household. Even though his older sister, Ashley, was a well-liked cheerleader, Butler was a homebody, instructing himself to participate in guitar and piano skateboarding on a makeshift ramp in the yard and obsessing around James Dean and Marlon Brando flicks on Turner Typical Videos. “He just experienced these types of an remarkable, animalistic spontaneity, and I was enraptured and fascinated,” Butler reported of Dean.

Butler begun getting performing lessons when he was in his early teens. “I try to remember printing out the ‘Pulp Fiction’ script when I was 12 and reading it to my mother as she drove me to course,” he explained, laughing.

By 20, Butler had put jointly a first rate children’s television résumé (“Zoey 101,” “Sharpay’s Magnificent Adventure”) and was headed towards youthful-grownup roles (“The Carrie Diaries,” “Arrow”). By 24, Butler experienced appeared in a few of indie movies. “But it was a extremely slow melt away,” he mentioned.

His break arrived in 2018, when his performance in the Broadway revival of “The Iceman Cometh” caught the attention of critics — and the production’s star, Denzel Washington, who urged the William Morris Agency to get powering Butler. Around the exact time, Butler landed a little but notable part in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once On a Time … in Hollywood.” He performed the Charles Manson follower Tex Watson.