While directing the Elvis Presley biopic, director Baz Luhrmann took some extreme measures against Austin Butler to get him into the character. Austin Butler revealed how, following the deeply troubling event, he went home crying.
Leonardo DiCaprio had previously warned the 30-year-old actor of Luhrmann’s challenging way of directing, which he himself faced too for ‘Romeo + Juliet’ and ‘The Great Gatsby’. In the end, Luhrmann’s methods turned out to be too intense for Butler.
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Austin Butler Shares The Challenging Event He Had To Go Through For ‘Elvis’
In a recent interview with VMAN, Butler shared, “Well, when I was on my first day in the recording studio, Baz wanted me to get as close to performing as possible. He had all the executives and everybody from RCA, who were back in the offices, he brought them into the recording studio and he goes, ‘I want you all to sit facing Austin,’ and he told them to heckle me.
Butler continued, “So then they were making fun of me and stuff while I was singing. When we were filming this moment when Elvis first goes on stage and he’s getting heckled by the audience, I knew what that felt like. I went home in tears that night. I really did.”
Sharing the personal and onerous experience, Butler also added that he knows Baz didn’t have any ill intentions attached to it. This tactic of his was to simply make Austin not only sympathize but empathize with Presley, who faced a lot of criticism throughout his career.
‘The Great Gatsby’ Actor Shared His Experience With Luhrmann
Before sharing Luhrmann’s unorthodox method, Butler had previously revealed to EW that the iconic Leonardo DiCaprio had given him some advice on working with Baz. This way, Butler was aware that Baz will put out some out-of-the-box methods.
“Leo told me, ‘Baz is going to constantly keep you off balance, and it’s going to pull things out of you [that] you never knew you had inside you.’ That’s exactly the experience that I had,” Butler said, later adding, “There were days where I just thought, ‘Baz, why don’t we just do what we prepared?’ I realized that he would push me right to the edge of what I was capable of. You capture lightning in a bottle in a way — if you had just done the thing that you had prepared, it may have been more stale.”
Baz’s unique way of directing has definitely paid off! ‘The Academy Awards’ are soon to come into line, and many people are betting that Butler may win the award for ‘Best Actor’. Butler worked on Elvis for two years, and he even shared that the character and Baz’s way had rooted into his body and mind so much that he unconsciously picks up the lake rock musician’s signature speaking voice. He told Elle Australia, “You spend so much time obsessing about one thing, and it really is like muscular habits, your mouth can change.”
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