Austin Butler is Aware His Speaking Voice in Real Life Sounds Like Elvis
Actor Austin Butler worked hard to play Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s epic biopic Elvis. Butler spent two years filming the movie, and he was so committed to the role that his voice still tends to slip back into Elvis’ rather than his own.
Austin Butler immersed himself in playing Elvis Presley
Austin Butler caught Baz Luhrmann’s attention after sending in a tape of himself sitting at his piano and playing Elvis’ beloved song “Unchained Melody.” Luhrmann decided then that Butler was the perfect fit to play Elvis.
Filming on the movie started in early 2020, but was put on hold until later in the year after the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; at the time, Butler’s co-star Tom Hanks was one of the first major celebrities to test positive for the virus.
By the time shooting had wrapped, Butler had spent about two years in the character of Elvis.
He knows he still sounds like Elvis
Many have noted that Butler’s speaking voice in interviews today contains hints of Elvis, both in his tone and his inflection. Butler acknowledged that he may still have some Elvis left in him.
“Because I’m a shy person, and when I know that there’s bits of Elvis that I’d have to click into in order to go out on stage and be in front of a ton of people, being surrounded by his name everywhere, there’s triggers,” he said in an interview with Elle Australia. “You spend so much time obsessing about one thing, and it really is like muscular habits, your mouth can change. It’s pretty amazing.”
He spoke about the “triggers” in another interview with Yahoo!. “It’s funny because certain situations trigger it, I think,” he said. “You know, for one, being surrounded by his name everywhere and then two, it becomes, I think, as well something where, I mean…that was the voice that I spoke in for two years.”
“It is so habitual at the end,” he added. “You get done and you kind of don’t remember what your natural voice is.”
He had an identity crisis after the movie
Butler explained to Viva that he had a full-blown identity crisis after shooting wrapped. He remembered a moment at the end of the last day of filming “where you’re going, ‘great job everybody, we did it,’ I went back to the trailer, and I just broke into tears. I had this sentence that was going over and over in my mind, ‘I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who I am.’ And that was scary.”
He achoed a similar sentiment in an interview with GQ: “You can lose touch with who you actually are. And I definitely had that when I finished Elvis — not knowing who I was.”
