Austin Butler and Elvis Movie

“How do you take Elvis, who’s seen as this icon or this caricature, strip all that away and find out who he really was as a man?”,

“That was the test that I saw in front of me,” – Austin Butler.

If you were an Elvis fan or knew a bit about the icon himself, you would easily join the rest of us to say that Austin Butler vanished into the role of Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis.

The American Film Institute has named Elvis as one of the top ten best films of 2022.

It also received three nominations at the 89th Golden Globe Awards. And for his performance as Elvis, Butler has received various accolades, including nominations for Best Actor from both the London and US/Canada Critics’ Choice Awards and the Golden Globe Awards.

But behind all the praise for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis was the journey and commitment of Austin Butler.

Who is Austin Butler?

Butler is a 31-year-old actor and California native known for some of his past works in some Disney programs.

Butler also appeared on shows like CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, and Arrow.

He didn’t have any significant film roles before getting his moment in 2019 with The Dead Don’t Die and, most importantly, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Elvis the Role

It was around 2019, too that Butler started to have Elvis on his mind. He created several Elvis playlists on his Spotify account, and one time when a friend heard him sing along to ‘Blue Christmas’, he urged him to portray the icon. Others said the same thing, too, later on.

Butler started to consider it seriously, and just like fate, his agent called to say that filmmaker Baz Luhrmann was making a movie about Presley’s life.

Butler wanted to do this, so he rejected many other roles that came his way to give his full attention to becoming the student of all things Elvis.

“I knew that the only way that I could do it was if I gave it everything that I had.” Said, Butler

Butler studied every Elvis documentary, film, and YouTube fan video he could find.

He practiced but still wasn’t sure he was ready. He even had self-doubt about his capability for the role.

The deciding moment came one night after Butler woke up from a nightmare about his mother dying again. She passed away from cancer in 2014 when Butler was 23. The same age Elvis was when his mother, Gladys, died.

“It was that thing where I knew this could just become a very bad day, you know, where you start out in deep grief,” Butler said about that morning.

“And I just thought there’s got to be a way to channel this feeling. And I was obsessing so much about Elvis that it became this other thing of going, ‘OK. He felt grief. How did he deal with it?’ Well, he would sing. He would pour out his soul into a song.”

Still, in his pajamas, Butler sang “Unchained Melody” to his mom.

When Luhrmann watched the submission, he called Butler with an offer.

Butler undertook months upon months of research and practice, including visiting those who knew Elvis Presley closely in his lifetime.

The result of Luhrmann’s vision and Butler’s mission became the epic biopic Elvis.

 Read more from I On The Scene: HERE