The Story of Austin Butler ｜ Life Before Fame

Actor Austin Butler has his biggest role to date coming up, where he will star as Elvis in the new biopic directed by Boz Luhrmann. However, you've probably seen Butler in a number of film roles in the past, including when he played a Manson cult member named Tex in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, as well as appearing in TV shows like The Carrie Diaries and Switched at Birth, just to name a few. While to be chosen to play the part of Elvis, I think we all know that's a huge deal. So if you want to know more about Austin Butler's journey and rise to Hollywood success, then stay tuned because we'll get into all of that and more here for you on Famous Life. Austin Robert Butler was born August 17, 1991, in Anaheim, California, to father David Butler and mother Laurie Ann Butler, who worked as an assistant. He also has an older sister, Ashley Butler, who worked as a background actor with him on Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide. Austin's parents divorced when he was 7, and more recently, in 2014, his mother, Laurie Ann, sadly passed away, reportedly from cancer. At the time, Austin posted on Twitter, Laurie Butler, my mom, my hero, my best friend, passed away this morning. Let's all celebrate her. I love you and will miss you every day, mom. When Austin was 13 years old, he was approached by an agent from a background acting management company at the Orange County Fair, which helped him get his start in the entertainment industry. Immediately, Austin knew he enjoyed it and soon began taking acting classes. In the meantime, Austin attended public school in California until he left to be homeschooled to accommodate his work schedule because shortly after he started his acting classes, he began to score some small roles. Butler continued his homeschooled education until the 10th grade, when he took the CHSBE, or the California High School Proficiency Exam, to complete his formal high school education. Austin also still likes to create and record music. When he was 13 and started with acting, he also taught himself to play guitar, then further taught himself piano at age 16. This fact likely helped him score the legendary role of Elvis, and at the very least, it couldn't have hurt. In 2005, after Butler worked as an extra on a handful of TV series, he landed his first regular job as a background actor playing Lionel Scranton for two seasons on the Nickelodeon show, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide. His friend on the series, Lindsay Shaw, who played Mose, introduced him to her manager, Pat Cutler, who immediately offered to represent him. From then on, Austin was taking his career as an actor seriously and began moving onto more roles. In 2007, for instance, Austin landed a guest-starring role on the Disney show Hannah Montana, playing the role of Derek Hansen alongside Miley Cyrus, and then played Jake in the episode I Like Jake on the Nickelodeon show iCarly. A year later, in February 2008, Austin landed a main role on another Nickelodeon series, this time on Zoey 101, playing James Garrett, the love interest of Jamie Lynn Spears' title character Zoey in the fourth season. He also appeared in an episode of Out of Jimmy's Head as Lance. Some further roles that came for Austin included when he starred in the family adventure movie Aliens in the Attic in 2009 as Jake Pearson, alongside other stars like Ashley Tisdale, Carter Jenkins, and more. In this movie, his character and his family are in a battle to save their vacation home and the world from an alien invasion. The same summer, Austin appeared in the starring role of Jordan in the short-lived ABC show Ruby and the Rockets with Alexa Vega, David Cassidy, and Patrick Cassidy. In the years that followed, Austin continued to work consistently. In 2010, he landed a recurring role on the CW show Life Unexpected, appeared on the Disney show Wizards of Waverly Place, as well as on two episodes of Jonas and guest roles on CSN Miami and The Defenders. It was also in 2010 when his former co-star Ashley Tisdale invited him to audition for a lead role in the movie she starred in, Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure, a spin-off of Disney's High School Musical that followed Tisdale's character Sharpay from the franchise after high school as she tries to land a big break on Broadway. In the movie, Austin landed the role as Peyton, a student filmmaker who is interested in Sharpay. Austin opened up about snagging this role, I'd worked with Ashley once and then I heard about the movie because she called me and said, Austin, I want you to come and read for the director for this. I think you'd be perfect. So I went and met with the director and it went really well and I ended up doing the movie. A year after, in 2011, Austin booked the role on the ABC series Switched at Birth, as well as playing a lead role in the Lifetime TV movie called The Bling Ring, where he starred as Zach. In this movie, Jennifer Grey from Dirty Dancing plays the mother of his character. Austin landed some smaller roles around the time and he was further cast in Sex and the City prequel series The Carrie Diaries, as Sebastian, who is the main character. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled in 2014 after two seasons. That same year, in 2014, Austin began doing some theatre acting as well, joining the play Death of the Author at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, and would return to the theatre in the future as well. Soon after, he joined the cast of the TV series Arrow and co-starred alongside Miranda Cosgrove in the movie The Intruders. While Austin had some other less-known on-screen roles at this time, a big break for him on stage would come when he made his Broadway debut in 2018 playing Don in The Iceman Cometh. For this, he starred alongside Denzel Washington, who also played a part in Austin, scoring the role of Elvis in the upcoming movie. But more on that in just a moment. One of Austin's most recent and significant movie roles was a small but memorable part in Quentin Tarantino's film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which came out in 2019. In this movie, Butler played Tex Watson, a fictional version of one of the Charles Manson family members, and his character was a big part of the unforgettable climactic scene. 2019 was also when Austin was cast as the legendary Elvis Presley in Elvis, a biographical film about the late singer directed by Baz Luhrmann. Elvis premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it garnered a 12-minute standing ovation from the audience and Butler's performance received acclaim, as well as praise from the Presley family themselves. And despite being a relatively unknown actor, Austin beat out some stiff competition to land the role of the King, going against the likes of Harry Styles, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, and more to score this lead role. The director, Baz, praised Butler after he was announced in the lead role, stating he had the unique ability to embody the spirit of one of the world's most iconic musical figures. It seems that Austin also got some help from A-lister Denzel, whom he worked with on Broadway. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, director Luhrmann talked about how he discovered Austin for the role, explaining Austin Butler found me. I received this videotape of this young man in a flood of tears playing Unchained Melanie, and I thought, wow, what is that? How is that happening? And then I got a call from Denzel Washington, who gave me a cold call. I did not know Denzel. And he said, I've worked with this guy on stage. I've never seen a work ethic like it. And I'm like, OK, I must see him. Butler also discussed how Washington helped him with his acting craft. He discussed meeting Oscar-winning actor for the first time during the production of Broadway's The Iceman Cometh. He said, there's that thing where you meet your heroes and you want to be their best friend. I was like, that's not going to happen. So I just went into the quickest mentality of I'm not going to try to be his friend. I'm just going to try to do work as well as I possibly can. However, Butler would make a habit out of arriving at the theater earlier than Denzel, who noticed and began to give him acting advice, taking him under his wing. Austin continued, he'd start telling me thoughts about the scene. And suddenly I've got Denzel almost as an acting coach and maybe even a life coach. Denzel always goes back to gratitude. I look for that longevity in any career. Having those moments where at the best of times or the worst of times, you're being grateful for what you actually have and having humility. Austin was extremely grateful for the role Denzel played in all of this, as well as his surprise call to the director of Elvis, which Austin didn't know about until after the fact. Despite Denzel's help with landing the role, Austin had no doubt killed it all on his own and worked hard to make everyone proud. Aside from Elvis, which will be released on June 24th, 2022, Butler is set to star in some upcoming projects too. In 2021, he was cast as a lead in the war drama miniseries Master of the Air. And in early 2022, it was reported that Austin is also in talks to play Faye Rautha in the upcoming sci-fi epic Dune Part 2. This was confirmed more recently in May 2022, prior to the film's pre-production. Well, I'm pretty sure that after blowing us all away playing Elvis on screen, the big roles are just gonna keep coming for Austin Butler. So be prepared to see a lot more of him in the future. We can't wait. Thanks for watching this video. Don't forget to subscribe to Famous Life and leave a comment for who you'd like us to feature next.