ALRIGHT ELVIS

And so is the actor who portrayed the King of Rock ’n Roll in the newly released musical extravaganza directed by Baz Luhrmann and also starring Tom Hanks

“Are you ready to fly?” The question comes early in Elvis, Baz Luhrmann’s latest richly imagined musical extravaganza, posed by The King’s manager, Tom Parker, aka, The Colonel. Parker is played by Tom Hanks, who could have been posing the same question in real life to newcomer to the big screen Austin Butler, who plays Elvis with aplomb. Butler beat out Harry Stiles and Ansel Elgort for the role in his first big-budget, high-stakes, widely publicised entry to the big time. According to the New York Times, when Warner Bros. showed Elvis to industry insiders last month, many attendees left with pinwheels in their eyes, likening Butler, 30, to an early-career Brad Pitt. In fact, an emotional Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s daughter, blurted out after seeing the film: “If Austin Butler doesn’t win an Academy Award I’m going to eat my foot.” Since then, the young actor has been cast by Denis Villeneuve as the villain in Dune: Part Two. Sunday Times Lifestyle spoke to the actor about his career-making role.

How did you feel when Baz Luhrmann told you you’d won the role of Elvis?

Austin Butler: Incredible. I’d been living with the idea for a while before that moment, and he and I had already been collaborating from about February to July, when I got the part.

That’s a long audition.

AB: Yeah, about a five-month audition. By the time I did the screen test we’d been working together for a while. There was a week when I didn’t know if I was going to do the role because I thought, ‘Well, now it’s the studio making decisions. Baz

and I got on well but it could have all gone for nothing.’ I had a week where I tried to come to grips with both versions. I thought, ‘Okay, if he calls me and says, ‘You didn’t get the part’, you got to accept that even after all the work.’

Then I thought, ‘If he says, ‘You got the part’, you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.’ I came to a point where I thought, ‘I can accept that version as well and I know what I’m going to do.’ When he told me I got it, I had a surge of joy, gratitude and excitement, followed immediately by, ‘It’s time to get to work.’I called the dialect coach and my movement coach and started doing research — well, continued doing research; I’d already been doing research for five months but I started to dig deep again that day.

Elvis Presley’s story can be told in any number of ways but Luhrmann chose to focus on the relationship between him and Colonel Tom Parker, who also serves as the narrator. So we’re getting Parker’s version of the story. What do you think of his approach?

AB: Baz is an incredible filmmaker and storyteller and an amazing human being. The way he’s approached this is brilliant and unconventional, an exciting way to approach such an extraordinary life. I got to see Baz’s process evolve over the course of shooting and in the editing. The story continually took new forms and was honed as the process went on.

You mentioned you had a dialect coach and a movement coach but as an actor how do you find your way into a man who’s been immortalised in pop culture for decades? How do you find a way to make it your own?

AB: That was the big challenge from the getgo because, as you say, Elvis has been immortalised. I often say he’s become the wallpaper of society.

Meaning his image is pretty much everywhere?

AB: Right, or he’s held up to a superhuman, god-like status. Neither of those impressions are accessible as an actor. Neither of them embodies the full complexity and nuance of a human being. And so, for me, it was how to find that? It began with endless research and watching every documentary I could find, watching anything I could find on YouTube and listening to audio recordings of interviews he did. I listened to every interview from the ’50s to the ’70s and read every book I could get my hands on. I started to find keys to his humanity and to discover things in myself that were remarkably similar and those that were different. I found parts of myself that I’d turned the volume down on and I turned it up.

A lot of actors will say the costumes, hair and make-up help them find the character. How did those elements help you further refine your work once you got into them and on set — especially the great Catherine Martin’s designs?

AB: Catherine [Luhrmann’s wife] is brilliant, one of the greatest costume designers. On top of that, she’s an amazing person, kind and maternal. Her attention to detail is unmatched. It was a privilege to work with her and to reap the benefits of her work ethic.

Do you have a favourite costume?

AB: No. I have a few … it depends on my mood. In the ’50s scenes there are certain things that stand out. I’ve never worn so many laced shirts. I loved them and the bolero jackets, which had an amazing cut. There’s an all-blue suit in the ’50s scenes with a blue lace shirt which I like. In the ’60s, one of the most empowering outfits is the leather for the ’68 Special scene. It feels great to wear it.

And it’s timeless.

AB: Completely. And then you feel like a superhero in the jumpsuits. It’s hard for me to choose just one.

I want to shift gears tell me about the relationships that Elvis has in the film and working with actors Helen Thomson and Richard Roxburgh as his parents and Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla and, of course, Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker.

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AB: Olivia playing Priscilla is intelligent, empathetic and so smart. She approached playing Priscilla with grace, strength and wisdom; she embodied that in Priscilla’s character in a beautiful way.

Tom — you don’t get a better collaborator. Not only has he been a hero of mine for many years, I’ve also admired him as an actor. He’s been a huge part of our lives, whether we watched Forrest Gump, Big, Castaway,

Philadelphia or any other of his films. He’ sa master of his craft. On top of that, he’s warm, welcoming, kind, funny and generous. He’ sa professional and showed up with humility that allows you to collaborate.

Helen — comes from doing a lot of theatre, you see that in her craft. She has a command over her instrument and can portray consistent, intense emotions remarkably truthfully. There are actors who can turn on an emotion without feeling it; it’s a technical thing, like flipping a light switch. It’s impressive. Watching her, you feel the emotion in your soul, it’s magic. Elvis’s relationship with his mother is central to his life, central to this story, and she was able to approach that with so much power and spiritual fortitude.

Richard — played Vernon, Elvis’s dad. He can act in the depth of really heavy moments, another professional who’s able to just tap into heavy emotion with authenticity and power. On the flipside, he’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, which is valuable on a set because when doing long hours you need relief.

The iconic stage performances in the film are incredible and you have a lot of them.

It made my heart soar because ultimately that’s the review that matters to me. If his family is happy, if Priscilla, who knew him better than anybody else, feels positive ...

AB: Yeah, there was a complex balance because on one side I wanted to approach the performances with incredible specificity. Whether we were doing, as Baz called them, trainspotting moments — moments that people can watch and compare to something that Elvis actually did, so you want it to be as specific as possible — or whether we were creating something l ike the moment where I’m performing at Russwood [Park] singing Trouble. In those performances we didn’t have footage of Elvis doing it but you want it to be as truthful to him, as authentic as possible, even when we were creating the performance. For moments like that, while we didn’t have actual footage, I would look at lots of images in which he was moving. There’s a great photo of him from Vancouver when he was rolling around on the stage with a microphone. We took that moment for this portion of the song. You end up compiling or weaving the performance together so that it feels like a trainspotting moment even though we didn’t have footage. You want to get specific without risking losing spontaneity and the feeling that it’s happening for the first time in front of your eyes.

How did you master the movements?

AB: I worked with a movement coach, Polly Bennett. We worked from the inside out. So, if he moved his hand in a certain way, we’d say, ‘Why does he move his hand like that? What’s the feeling that’s carbonating inside him that’s causing him to move that way?’ When it came time to film, I had to forget that and make it feel like it was happening for the first time. Sometimes I failed and sometimes we captured lightning in a bottle. Each time, I worked at it, worked at it, worked at it, and then released it.

Priscilla Presley apparently loved the film. How does that feel?

AB: Moving. It made my heart soar because ultimately that’s the review that matters to me. If his family is happy, if Priscilla, who knew him better than anybody else, feels positive … I don’t want to speak for her, but if she had a positive experience watching it and said kind things, that’s all I can hope for. I wanted to make her and his family proud and do him justice. That goes for everybody around the world who loves him. I want everyone to feel his essence and feel like we did him justice.

On now, only in cinemas.