KING MAKER
How Elvis star Austin Butler overcame heartbreaking tragedy to play the King with the help of two A-list romances
CURLED up in a foetal position, Elvis Presley clung to the hems of his mother’s dress in the aftermath of her fatal heart attack.
The King of Rock ’n’ Roll could not bear to let go of 46-year-old Gladys, the woman he lived for.
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And when actor Austin Butler played out the haunting scene as the legendary singer in a dazzling new £120million biopic, his tears flowed thick and fast.
For the 30-year-old understood exactly what Elvis had gone through, having lost his own beloved mother when he was also 23.
Austin’s mum Lori — his “hero and best friend” died aged 50 in September 2014 from duodenal cancer.
She had been diagnosed just nine months earlier.
A former dental assistant, Lori had home-schooled Austin and older sister Ashley, 34, and supported him throughout his career.
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In 2019, stirring from a dreadful nightmare that Lori was still alive but dying, Austin realised his link with Elvis.
That night he recorded an audition tape of himself singing one of the legend’s hits, hoping to win the right to play the lead in director Baz Luhrmann’s new drama Elvis.
But really, he says: “I sang it to my mom.”
Once Luhrmann saw the tape, the relatively unknown actor went from a non-runner to the front runner, ahead of chart-topper Harry Styles and War Dogs star Miles Teller.
Now his incredible performance is receiving rave reviews, with the singer’s daughter Lisa Marie Presley hailing him an Oscar certainty and Austin being touted as the next Leonardo DiCaprio.
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Austin, who has a small tattoo of 27, his mum’s lucky “God number” on his left wrist in her memory, realised he had to empathise with Elvis’s heartbreaks rather than try to look exactly like him.
Family shake-up
He says: “When I first started, I put these unrealistic expectations on myself that somehow if I worked hard enough, I could make my face identical to Elvis’s face.
“I realised that at a certain point that becomes like going to the wax museum. And what is really important is that his soul comes out.”
Now Austin’s aunt Hilary Howell Miller believes his mum, her late sister Lori, is beaming down at his triumph.
Hilary, 47, told The Sun: “I know she’s smiling down right now watching this but I wish she was here to see all the success that Austin is coming to.
“What makes it crazy is that Elvis and my dad shared the same birthday and Elvis passed away on my parents’ anniversary.
“Both my dad and Elvis were from Mississippi, my dad was from a very small town there called Lucedale.
“And Austin lost his mom at 23 like Elvis, so there are a lot of coincidences.
“I think it’s something that God had his hand on.”
Hilary, a health insurance worker and mum of two from Kerman, California, continued: “Lori pretty much stopped her career to help Austin to get where he is.
"She was doing daycare out of her home at the time and she quit that.
“She started doing stand-in work on the sets of TV shows in Hollywood so she could work around Austin’s schedule.
“Losing his mom at the same age as Elvis definitely helped Austin relate to the character.
“It helped him get really down into his soul and he was able to connect.”
Austin has spent three years dedicated to transforming himself into the rhinestone-clad singer for the epic, which opens in cinemas on June 24. It follows roles in Sex In The City prequel The Carrie Diaries and as a killer in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Yet his start in acting came by chance.
Born in Anaheim, California, not far from Disneyland, Austin was more interested in sport than going on stage in his early years.
His world was turned upside down when, at the age of seven, his mum divorced his dad David, an estate agent.
Three years later, when the step-brother he’d acquired in this family shake-up went for a part in a food advert, Austin’s talents were spotted.
The “shy” youngster was asked if he’d like to have a go too in front of the camera and he agreed.
Austin recalled: “I don’t know what came over me. I was shaking, but I did it, and that led to me being an extra at ten years old.”
Walk-on parts gradually developed into speaking ones and he started to take acting seriously.
The blond, wholesome, floppy-haired youngster was perfect for American kids’ TV shows such as Hannah Montana, in which he appeared once, and Zoey 101, where he was a lead.
But his first movie, 2009’s Aliens In The Attic, received poor reviews, as did the High School Musical spin-off Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure two years later.
The High School link, though, placed him in the orbit of the show’s female star Vanessa Hudgens, who had recently split from Zac Efron.
Soon, Austin and Vanessa were inseparable, going to festivals, on exotic holidays and to the evangelical Hillsong Church together.
Vanessa, 33, described him as “the love of my life” and said he had “the kindest heart, beautiful soul, crazy talent and best looks I’ve ever seen.”
Not to mention an obvious talent for crooning the megastar’s hits.
“You need to play Elvis”, she once told him after hearing him sing along to Presley’s version of Blue Christmas.
‘Tears to my eyes’
Despite Vanessa living in Los Angeles and Austin in New York, their long-distance relationship lasted nine years.
But they split in 2020, around the time he was filming Elvis in Australia, Luhrmann’s homeland.
When Austin had learned Luhrmann was working on a script for an Elvis biopic he decided to “dedicate everything I have to this”.
Austin, who is now dating Cindy Crawford’s daughter Kaia Gerber, 20, said: “I basically put the rest of my life on pause for two years. And I just absorbed everything I possibly could and I went down the rabbit hole of obsession.
“I spent two years studying and trying to find his humanity as much as I could through that.”
Austin employed an adviser to help him perfect Elvis’s hip thrusts, visited the singer’s Graceland home in Memphis, Tennessee, and spent days watching videos. He would pore over clips.
He revealed: “I’ve watched one second of this (Hound Dog) clip over and over and over to look at what his eyes were doing, the angle of his head, what his hand was doing, to try to find it exactly.
“And practise that until it was in my marrow.” The Californian also needed a voice coach to help him perfect the Mississippi-born legend’s southern drawl.
He maintained the accent even when off set.
In the movie, Austin, who learned to play guitar and piano aged 13, sings the early years Elvis songs himself. But his voice is blended with old recordings for the later part of Presley’s life.
Making the movie proved tough, with the shoot Down Under being put on hold due to Covid then running for more than double the planned five months.
He put so much energy into it that he had to be taken to hospital with a virus in March 2021, just after completing it.
Austin said: “My body just started shutting down the day after I finished Elvis.” Even before the movie reaches cinemas, Austin’s performance has put him in demand.
He has been cast as a villain in the sequel to Dune and will have the lead role in an Apple Plus Second World War TV series called Masters Of The Air, which is being produced by Steven Spielberg.
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Most importantly, though, the movie has the seal of approval from Elvis’s former wife Priscilla, 77. She praised Austin’s “unbelievable” performance.
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The proud actor concludes: “Baz read Priscilla’s text to me when we were driving to dinner and it brought tears to my eyes because ultimately, there’s never been a person I’ve never met that I’ve loved more than Elvis.”
- Elvis is in cinemas on June 24.
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