The Stunning Transformation Of Austin Butler

Austin Butler has been around for years — but you may not have realized that. He started his career with a steady stream of projects on the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, including "Hannah Montana," "iCarly," "Zoey 101," and "Wizards of Waverley Place." He then landed a role in the "Sex and the City" prequel, "The Carrie Diaries" and a role in Sofia Coppola's "The Bling Ring." Since then, Butler has slowly built a career in prestigious projects. After making a stir in the 2018 play "The Iceman Cometh," Butler landed parts in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood," Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis," and Tom Hanks' series "Masters of the Air." In 2024, he landed yet another major role — Feyd-Rautha in Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" sequel.

Butler has certainly come a long way — from shy teen actor to Oscar-nominated A-lister is an impressive journey. Let's look back at Butler's transformation to see how it all happened.

If you've ever seen Austin Butler on screen, you would probably assume that he was always outgoing, loving nothing more than to be the center of attention. However, even as a child actor, he was actually painfully shy. Raised in California, Butler was a "wallflower" as a child. "I really didn't mix with other children," he confessed to Hollywood Authentic. "I spent a lot of time in my room playing the guitar."

Butler discovered acting when he was around 12. For the shy young boy, acting gave him the tools to open up and overcome his shyness. "It helped me to find ways in which I could go about in the world," he explained.

Even though Butler grew out of his shyness and discovered a coping mechanism in the form of acting, that shy boy is "still a part of [him]," he told Numero. 

As a boy, Austin Butler's shyness meant he didn't have loads of friends. He was, however, close to members of his family. "I grew up very close to my mom and my sister," he told Interview Magazine. 

Because of his tight-knit relationship with his sister, Ashley, and his mother, Butler initially thought he was more comfortable around women than men. "I found myself able to open up to women quicker, and once I started hanging out with men who were more like you, who could open up to me quicker, I started to realize it's not about gender at all," he said. "It's about human connection." 

Butler remains extremely close to Ashley — in fact, she was even his plus-one to the Golden Globes in 2023. "She's my one and only sister, so it'll be nice to be with her," he told People at the time. Butler's mother sadly died in 2014, but he continues to honor her memory. "I love my mom. ... Even though I had this crippling shyness, when I was with her, I'd just do anything to make my mom laugh," he said during his "Saturday Night Live" monologue in 2023.

When Austin Butler was around 13, he landed his first acting job. "I stumbled into doing extra work, so that got me onto sets in a very low-pressure way," he told Interview Magazine. After a few acting classes, he started auditioning for speaking roles. At first, it was slow going. "It was a slow process of going through hundreds of auditions, and you only book one thing," he recalled. "I remember the days of being so grateful to just book one line on a TV show."

His first few speaking roles were on shows like "Hannah Montana," "Zoey 101," and "Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure." Looking back, Butler admits that these early roles weren't exactly his best work — however, he has no regrets about his past. "I am grateful I started young because it allowed me a lot of time to make mistakes," he explained to People. "I had so many years of really bad acting."

The more Austin Butler explored the world of acting, the more obsessed he became. "Once I started going to acting class and realized there's a craft behind it — that sort of became this addiction for me," he told Vanity Fair in 2023. "Addiction might be a strong word, but obsession with finding honesty, really." As he told People, he began watching old movies obsessively, including "Raging Bull" and "East of Eden."

This obsession with acting meant that Butler was always a professional, approaching each role with a level of seriousness that was unusual for a child of his age. "I look back on the Nickelodeon and Disney shows that I did; even though my skill wasn't there, I still wanted to give the energy [as if] I was going to make 'Raging Bull,' " Butler told Backstage later. "I kept that fierce dedication toward trying to find more truth, even in things where it could be easier to just phone it in."

Butler may have been a Disney kid then, but it was clear he was destined for much more serious acting work in the years to come.

Austin Butler's first big role after his days as a Disney star came in 2012 when he was cast as Sebastian in "The Carrie Diaries," a prequel centered on Carrie Bradshaw before her "Sex and the City" days. Butler moved to the West Village in New York City for the role. As he told Interview Magazine at the time, he prepared by watching classic teen movies and checking out the original "Sex and the City" series. "I never pictured myself on 'Sex and the City,'" he said. "But I watched the first two seasons in under a week and ... well, I get why women love it."

Although the role was a step up from the child actor roles he'd landed at the Disney Channel, a teen romance still wasn't what Butler was after. Nevertheless, he was grateful for the experience. As he later told Esquire, "That was my schooling. I wouldn't be here without all of that."

While living in New York, Austin Butler developed a new obsession — theater. It was the first time he'd had the chance to see a Broadway play, and soon, he was spending most of his free time in the audience. Although he moved back to California after wrapping on "The Carrie Diaries," he made pilgrimages to New York for the theater. "I would come back for two weeks, and I'd see fourteen plays," he told Esquire.

As Butler's passion for theater grew, he began to rethink his entire career. He realized that he would only be happy if he got to do fulfilling work — like, for instance, starring in a Broadway play.  "I'd been off for a couple of years, and I came back to L.A. and thought, 'I would rather not work as an actor than ever do something I'm not passionate about again,'" he told Backstage. "I didn't work for eight months."

Finally, Austin Butler had a shot at his dream role — a part in a Broadway play that would also star Denzel Washington. It was, he told Esquire, "exactly what I wanted to do." However, at first he thought he didn't have a chance. "I thought, 'I'm an L.A. actor; they're not going to cast me,'" he told Backstage. "I'd been told before that there's this divide: That's New York — they're not going to look at you or respect you." However, to his surprise, he landed the role. It was a huge hit, and Butler was the breakout star. Suddenly, he was respected as a "real" actor.

For Butler, breaking into the theater world paved the way for other acting opportunities. In fact, as he told Jimmy Fallon on "The Tonight Show," "[The play] shifted my whole career in many ways." Not only did Butler get to work with a legend like Washington, but Washington later called director Baz Luhrmann and encouraged him to hire Butler for "Elvis."

After proving himself on the Broadway stage, Austin Butler had the chance to play the kinds of onscreen roles he'd always dreamed about. First came Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood," in which Butler played Tex Watson, an unnerving, murderous member of the Manson Family. 

It turns out that Butler actually pulled out of the running to play a bigger role in "Top Gun" because he'd wanted to work with Tarantino. The role of Rooster in "Top Gun" went to Miles Teller instead. But by all accounts, it all happened as it was meant to. Butler was thrilled to work on a more serious project and with the legendary director. "I've talked a lot about how much Quentin meant to me," Butler revealed in an interview on "Hot Ones." And it was just always my dream to work with him."

In 2011, Austin Butler began a relationship with Vanessa Hudgens, a fellow former Disney kid. The pair appeared together in "Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure" that year and then embarked on a long-distance relationship. In 2020, the pair announced that they had separated. At the time, Butler took a philosophical approach, seeing it as an opportunity for growth. When asked about the breakup by GQ, he simply replied, "Life is full of changes, and you've got to find a way to constantly be evolving and growing."

Later, Butler came under fire for referring to Hudgens as merely a "friend." He explained his reasoning to Esquire, saying, "I felt that I was respecting her privacy in a way and not wanting to bring up a ton of things that would cause her to have to talk." He went on to say, "I have so much love and care for her. It was in no way trying to erase anything."

Austin Butler landed a career-defining role with the titular character in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis Presley biopic in 2022. Butler won the role in an unusual way — desperate to play the King of Rock 'n' Roll, he sent Luhrmann a video of his performance of "Unchained Melody." In the video, he wore a dressing gown. "Was it an audition? Or was he having a breakdown?" said Luhrmann to GQ, remembering his initial reaction to the strange video. After a live audition, though, Luhrmann was sold.

Butler threw himself into the role. He began researching, looking through photos and video footage. "Then I felt this fear that I couldn't infuse it all into me or somehow hold it all at once. It felt like there were a million spinning plates that I was trying to spin, so that was terrifying," he admitted to Deadline. However, Butler would end up with plenty of time to prepare due to production delays caused by the pandemic.

After playing Elvis Presley, Butler began to look at his own career in a new light. "It's allowed me to really appreciate the things that I'm now getting to experience in my life, even just being with my family or anything like that," he told Deadline. "Because there's a lot of loneliness in Elvis' life. ... So now I feel like I'm so much more aware of those things. In a way, he's protecting me from certain pitfalls and things, so I owe him for that as well."

Austin Butler fully transformed into Elvis Presley — and, in at least one way, he had difficulty transforming back into Austin Butler. At first, Butler began mimicking Elvis' famous low, Southern voice. "I just became obsessed with the way he said one word, and then the entire day, I would just spend sort of figuring out the exact lilt and rhythm of the way that he said a certain word or something," he told Deadline. To get it perfect, he listened to all of Elvis' recordings — that's more than 700 songs. He also spent much time in isolation.

"During 'Elvis,' I didn't see my family for about three years. ... I had months where I wouldn't talk to anybody. And when I did, the only thing I was ever thinking about was Elvis," he told Variety. "I was speaking in his voice the whole time."

After the film was released, fans noticed that Butler's voice still sounded, well, a whole lot like Elvis'. As Butler's voice coach, Erik Singer, told Vox, the change may have been brought about by "all of that singing" Butler had to do.

In 2021, Austin Butler began a new relationship with Kaia Gerber, Cindy Crawford's daughter. The pair were first spotted together leaving for vacation. They then spent Valentine's Day together in London. The pair made several appearances on the red carpet and were even spotted kissing on the red carpet of the "Elvis" premiere. In 2023, the pair attended a Halloween party in a couples costume, dressed as iconic art world duo Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick.

In 2024, Butler spoke about his girlfriend's British Vogue cover shoot, which marked the first time he had openly discussed the relationship. "It was legendary," he said of the shoot to Entertainment Tonight. "It was amazing. I loved getting to see that. What an exciting cover. I loved it." It sure seems like Butler has entered a new romantic era with Gerber — and they could not be more adorable.

After taking Hollywood by storm with "Elvis," Austin Butler found himself leading yet another major project — this time, it was "Masters of the Air," an Apple TV+ miniseries. As Butler explained to The Hollywood Reporter, the role came his way while he was still making "Elvis." His co-star, Tom Hanks, pitched him the project. "Tom and I were having dinner and we talked about it a bit," he said, adding, "It was one of those no-brainer decisions. You've got Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman." Even though Butler had hoped to take some time off after playing Elvis, he decided to leap headfirst into the new project.

One of the trickiest parts of stepping straight into "Masters of the Air" was letting go of Elvis in the space of a week. The actor explained to Stephen Colbert during an appearance on "The Late Show," "I was just trying to remember who I was." In fact, he needed professional help to do that. "I had a dialect coach just help me not sound like Elvis," he confessed.

Austin Butler continued to find success in his career when he landed the role of Feyd-Rautha, the villain in Denis Villeneuve's "Dune: Part Two." The character is bloodthirsty and "psychotic," according to Florence Pugh's character, Irulan. Although Butler has a habit of taking a method approach to his roles, he realized that he would need to find ways to create some distance with this role. "With Feyd, I knew that that would be unhealthy for my family and friends," Butler said to Far Out Magazine. "I made a conscious decision to have a boundary. It allowed for more freedom between action and cut because I knew I was going to protect everybody else outside of the context of what we were doing." Villeneuve added, "When the camera was off, you were still maybe 25 or 30% Feyd. Just enough to still be present and focus but removed enough that you didn't kill anybody on set." 

Cleary, Butler's tempered method approach worked well — his performance had already been heralded as a legendary villain portrayal by early March. As critic Barry Levitt wrote for InsideHook, "Austin Butler finally gives [a villain] we'll never forget." We can't wait to see what other memorable characters he brings us in years to come.