Austin Butler, you’ll have heard, has taken a little bit of flack for sounding an excessive amount of like Elvis now that he is now not, um, Elvis.
The 31-year-old breakout star of Baz Luhrmann’s flamboyant biopic even needed to be defended by fellow Oscar nominee Angela Bassett, who’s defined that she, too, had a tough time shaking the Tina Turner vibe after taking part in her again in 1993.
In any case, Butler says there’s one thing much more important that is remained with him since making “Elvis”: a brand new relationship with concern.
The problem of taking part in an icon who’s been imitated as usually as Presley was so nice, he says, that he suffered from “impostor syndrome” and will have been felled by the concern — concern that saved him from sleeping nicely for 2 years, he provides — had he not realized to make use of it as a “compass,” in his words. Now, he says, he asks himself: “What am I terrified of today?” And then he tries to step towards it, slightly than away.
Butler, whose Golden Globe from January now has to share shelf area with the BAFTA from February, appears to be like like one of many key favorites so as to add an Oscar to that shelf, come March. He spoke to The Associated Press shortly after profitable his Oscar nod, musing about how he tried to strategy the function so it felt human and never like “going to a wax museum,” about what he realized personally from the method, and in addition concerning the stunning dying of Lisa Marie Presley. T he interview has been edited for readability.
AP: It’s been an emotional time for you: Winning a Golden Globe, then the tragic dying of Lisa Marie Presley, then the Oscar nomination, all inside days. Can you describe that journey?
BUTLER: I imply, the peaks are so excessive and the valleys have been so low. For every of those moments I’m simply making an attempt to remain as current as I can … I simply want Lisa Marie have been right here with us to have a good time. At instances, within the midst of intense grief and only a shattering loss, it feels form of weird to have a good time. But I additionally know the way a lot this movie meant to Lisa Marie, how a lot her father’s legacy meant to her. So I really feel so proud and humble to be part of that story. But it places issues in perspective for certain, when you may have such intense loss like that.
AP: Let’s discuss concerning the challenges of the function itself. You needed to discover a approach to keep away from mimicking a much-mimicked icon, and to convey humanity and authenticity to it. Can you place into phrases the way you managed that?
BUTLER: It’s so exhausting to quantify it, and it’s such a difficult factor to speak about with out sounding extremely pretentious and self-important. There are sure elements that even I don’t absolutely perceive. Thankfully I had a very long time. I had a yr and a half earlier than we began filming, and a big chunk of that point was alone in my condo in Australia through the six months that the movie shut down through the pandemic. So it was loads of simply specializing in it day-after-day and making an attempt to get into the lifetime of this man, slightly than all of the exterior issues.
Even the way in which that he moved, all of it needed to come from his spirit, slightly than it ever feeling like choreography. Because there are moments the place you need to be meticulous, you already know, very particular to how he really moved in a sure method or how he spoke or no matter that’s, however it may well’t really feel prefer it’s a recreation — in any other case you then simply really feel such as you’re going to a wax museum or one thing! So I used to be very lucky to be surrounded by superb folks, my superb motion coach Polly Bennett and dialect coaches and singing coaches and karate instructors. I had so many individuals round me that that aided me in that course of. But it was only a lengthy technique of making an attempt to determine it out day-after-day, to really feel like a detective.
AP: After all that, would you say the character has modified you in any everlasting method?
BUTLER: Yeah and in most likely extra methods than I may even describe or determine myself. But one of many most important issues is that it’s altered my relationship with concern, as a result of this was such a frightening enterprise. And there have been many moments the place I the place I felt, you already know, the place perhaps I didn’t consider in myself, I felt impostor syndrome — only a terror that didn’t permit me to sleep for 2 years. And so now my expertise is that after I really feel concern like that, I type of know that it’s not the factor that has to cease you. That you simply preserve doing the work and you utilize the concern nearly as a compass, to go, “What am I terrified of today?” — and step into that slightly than operating away from it. I believe that that’s most likely the largest factor that’s actually caught with me.
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