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Austin Butler and his locomotive hips have arrived at the 2023 Academy Awards. After his Golden Globes Best Actor win last month (with his girlfriend Kaia Gerber by his side), Butler, in a Saint Laurent tuxedo and Cartier jewels (and with flip top hair), is looking to take home the Oscar for Best Actor this evening for his role as Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s spangly biopic Elvis.
The epic, 159-minute biopic (complete with frenetic montages and retro animations) traces the King’s rise to fame in the 50s, his marriage to Priscilla (played by Australia’s Olivia DeJonge) and his very complex relationship with his manager Colonel Tom Parker (played by Tom Hanks).
“I basically put the rest of my life on hold for two years. I just went down the road of obsession,” Butler, in a deep voice, tells a packed-out press room at the Cannes Film Festival in May. “I would watch one second of a clip over and over and over and look at what his eyes were doing, what his hands were doing and practise that until it was in my marrow. The reason why he moved in that way and why he spoke in that way – that meant farming his inner being.”
If Butler wins tonight, he will be the first actor born after 1990 to receive a Best Actor award.
The 31-year-old actor received his Oscar nomination just days after Elvis’ daughter’s untimely death.
“There is that thing where I wish Lisa Marie was here right now to get to be a part of it and celebrate this,” Butler told the New York Times. “It definitely has filled me with a lot of appreciation for every moment that I got to spend with her. And just how lucky I was to get the type of experiences that I had with her, very private moments and that sort of thing, that I’ll just cherish for the rest of my life.”
From the get go, Luhrmann made it known he didn’t care about any other film review aside from Priscilla’s. Butler was with Luhrmann at the same time Priscilla was watching the film the first time, a three-hour wait he describes as “anxious”. As Priscilla exited the theatre, Luhrmann caught word that she was crying.
“I thought, ‘Oh no, what have we done?’” Luhrmann told the press in Cannes, his head in his hands as he re-lived the moment.
Soon after, he received a text message from Priscilla.
“She said, ‘I just wasn’t ready for that’,” recalls Luhrmann. “’Every breath of Austin’s, every move, the spirit, the humanity, the man – not the icon, not the guy in the trashy suit – if my husband was here today, he would look at [Austin] and say ‘Hot damn, you are me.’”
“No critic, no review, is ever going to mean more to us than the woman who was married to Elvis Presley.”
Meet me back here to see if Butler can bring home the Best Actor Academy Award – and more importantly: Will he accept the award in Elvis’ Southern drawl?
