Austin Butler is riding high on a phenomenal wave of success brought about by his portrayal of Elvis — and he is giving credit where credit is due.
The 31-year-old actor, who is nominated for Best Actor at the upcoming Academy Awards this year for his performance in the Bay Luhrmann biopic, has revealed in a new interview that it was his former longtime love Vannesa Hudgens who encouraged him to pursue the role.
In his interview with the Los Angeles Times, Austin shared that it was Vanessa who manifested his role as the King of Rock ’n Roll. He said of his then-girlfriend:
“We’d been together for so long and she had this sort of clairvoyant moment and so I really, I owe her a lot for believing in me.”
He was then asked if the “friend” he was talking about in a previous interview was also Vanessa, to which Austin confirmed that it was her:
“That’s right. I was with my partner at the time.”
It was in a recent THR round table interview that Austin shared the story of Vanessa manifesting him as Elvis. Referring to her in that previous interview as his “friend,” Austin said at the time:
“People always ask me, ‘Had you for years thought you looked like Elvis?’ And I’d say, ‘I don’t really think I look that much like Elvis.’ That never crossed my mind. But the month before I heard that Baz [Luhrmann] was making the movie, I was going to look at Christmas lights with a friend, and there was an Elvis Christmas song on the radio, and I was singing along, and my friend looked over at me and goes, ‘You’ve got to play Elvis.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s such a long shot.’
A couple of weeks later, I was playing the piano. I never really sang for any of my friends or anything. That same friend was there and I was playing the piano. She said, ‘I’m serious. You gotta figure out how you can get the rights to a script.’”
Vanessa and Austin were in a relationship from 2011 to 2020.
