Getting into the skin of Elvis Presley himself is not easy, and Austin Butler (California, 31 years old) knows it. The actor, who was nominated for an Oscar this year for playing the king of rock & roll in the biopic Elvis, has revealed on different occasions the tough preparation he underwent for three years to nail the role. In an interview with The Courier Mail in 2021, his strength and conditioning coach, former Olympic swimmer Ryan Gambin, spoke of the strength work the interpreter underwent, with exercises focused, above all, on hip movements, including squats and deadlifts. As for the preparation of the voice, Butler had the help of the vocal coach Irene Bartlett, thanks to whom he managed to replicate the voice of the legendary musician so exactly that the actor himself assured that he had suffered an alteration in his vocal cords, which was has maintained even after the end of filming. “I tried to live his life as long as I could. That helped me not to feel like a fraud when I got to the set. I spoke with that voice in my day to day, when I asked for a coffee,” the actor confessed.
Beyond his physical and vocal trainers, there was someone who lived closely that intense transformation from Butler to Presley: Tom Hanks (California, 67 years old). The actor, who plays Elvis’s heartless manager in the film, became the protagonist’s great support in real life, as Butler himself has now confessed in an interview with The Times. In fact, he confirms that he got the lead role in the miniseries The Masters of the Air ―produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks― because Hanks was worried about his mental health after his great dedication to Elvis. According to Butler, his co-star told him: “You’ve dived so deeply into Elvis that, for your sanity, it would be wise to go straight to something else. If you just jump off the train, you might get emotional whiplash…and, you know, I’ve got this thing I’m producing.”
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The years of experience in the film industry of the interpreter of Forrest Gump, Castaway or The Green Mile are noticeable, because getting so fully into the character of Elvis earned Butler the well-deserved recognition from the public and critics ―even the daughter of Elvis herself. singer, the recently deceased Lisa Marie Presley congratulated him―, but also health problems. The preparation was so intense that, when he finished recording, he was hospitalized for a virus that left him in bed for a week. The actor recounted that, in March 2021, when the filming of the film ended, he suddenly experienced intense physical pain. “The next day, I woke up at four in the morning with excruciating pain and they rushed me to the hospital,” he said in an interview with GQ, where he explained how he felt that his “body began to shut down.” . He was convalescing for a week after doctors diagnosed him with a virus that he may have triggered appendicitis, and he himself noted that he too suffered an identity crisis due to his deep immersion in the role.
Butler said Elvis pushed him “to push the limits of what’s possible,” but not every experience will be like that. “I don’t think I’ll ever have an experience like that again, but if I really have to dig, I’ll do it because it makes me feel alive,” said the actor, who began his career as a Disney kid on shows like Hannah Montana and Zoey 101.
In this new stage after Elvis, Butler faces two new releases scheduled for this year. On the one hand, the aforementioned miniseries by his colleague Hanks, The Masters of the Air, on Apple TV, where he has put himself in the shoes of one of the aviators who risked their lives in the 100th Bomber Group during World War II. . On the other hand, the long-awaited second film part of Dune, which will hit the big screen on November 3 and where he will share a cast with Javier Bardem, Zendaya, Rebeca Ferguson or Timothée Chalamet. In this case, he will play the villain Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen -played by Sting in the 1984 film adaptation- and he also seems convinced of getting into his skin, according to an interview with Backstage: “He’s the bad boy who doesn’t feel like if it were. He feels that he is the hero of his own story. You don’t have to judge the character and you have to find a way to feel the motivation towards any of your actions.”
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