Austin Butler could also be considered one of Hollywood’s most devoted actors, however his dedication to the craft practically got here at a harmful value whereas filming The Bikeriders.
Amid a busy few years that noticed him remodel into Elvis Presley on the massive display screen, Butler revealed that he skilled a daunting medical episode simply as he was heading into his subsequent main position. The Oscar nominee shared that he went briefly blind after being hit with a extreme migraine on a flight to Cincinnati, Ohio, the place he was set to start work on Jeff Nichols’ motorbike drama.
“It felt just like the life was being sucked from my physique,” Butler advised Males’s Well being. “I instantly felt a euphoric sensation, and I truly genuinely thought I used to be dying.”
The terrifying second didn’t final lengthy, nevertheless it shook him. Butler defined that his imaginative and prescient slowly returned and he chalked it as much as excessive sleep deprivation. Slightly than resting, although, the 33-year-old actor powered via and went straight to set, filming for the remainder of the day.
Primarily based on Danny Lyon’s 1968 picture ebook, The Bikeriders tells the story of the Vandals MC, a fictional motorbike membership that begins as a protected haven for outsiders earlier than spiraling right into a harmful gang. For Butler, diving into such heavy materials isn’t new — however he admits the toll it has taken hasn’t at all times been wholesome.
“For a very long time, I felt that it needed to be a tortured course of and I might come out the opposite facet damaged,” he shared.
Butler, who famously embodied Elvis for practically three years (a lot in order that he required a dialect coach afterward to “un-Elvis” himself), has lengthy practiced intense methodology appearing. His method has earned him essential acclaim and an Academy Award nomination, but additionally left him emotionally and bodily drained.
That’s the place actress Laura Dern entered the image. Butler credit the Oscar winner with altering the best way he thinks about his work. “She’s serving to me increasingly more to see which you could come out the opposite facet, and possibly bits of you may have healed, synthesized, and metabolized,” Butler mentioned. “It may be therapeutic, in a means.”
The Jurassic Park and Huge Little Lies star shortly turned an unlikely mentor to Butler after they met, a connection he describes as soul-deep. “It was like the entire room simply quieted, and we related on a soul stage. We felt like kindred spirits… My mother was even advised that she seemed like Laura Dern, and in order quickly as I noticed her, it’s like, ‘She appears to be like like my precise mother.’”
Due to Dern’s steerage, Butler has began to embrace a brand new perspective: that embodying darker roles doesn’t should destroy him. “You don’t should destroy the sunshine,” he mentioned.
