Elvis movie: Austin Butler ‘had chills’ after discovering personal connection to The King

ELVIS: Official second trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s movie

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This week, Baz Luhrmann’s long-awaited Elvis Presley movie finally premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The biopic has been years in the making and title star Austin Butler took the weight of such a role incredibly seriously. The 30-year-old recently shared an emotional meeting with The King’s ex-wife Priscilla Presley he had at Graceland.

Arriving at the Memphis mansion, Butler was given a tour and was embraced by Priscilla who assured him he had a lot of support. The Elvis star admitted: “I walked down the hall with Baz afterwards with tears in my eyes.” 

He had a similar reaction months later when both the 77-year-old and her daughter Lisa Marie gave their approval to his performance in the movie.

During his preparations for the role, the actor was amazed to find he had something astonishing in common with the music icon he was playing.

Speaking with GQ, Butler said: “His mother passed away when he was 23, and my mum passed away when I was 23. So when I learned that, it was one of those things where I got chills, and I just thought, Okay, I can connect to that.” 

Elvis had a very deep and intimate relationship with his mother Gladys, which started when she lost her other son, The King’s’ twin brother Jesse, the day they were born.

Tragically she died at the age of just 46 in 1958, just a couple of years into Elvis’ incredible career.

Director Baz also noticed other connections between Butler and Elvis as they worked together.

He shared: “Elvis was an intensely spiritual person. And I think Austin has a really spiritual quality to him. He has a very sensitive and big inner life. He’s very lovely on the outside, but you know there’s deep thinking going on on the inside.” 

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Elvis became very religious and was always said to be searching for the transcendent, according to the Memphis Mafia. He was fascinated by spirituality, numerology and paranormal activity like UFO claims.

According to Lisa Marie, upstairs at Graceland has piles of books on such topics and a ton of Bibles.

Elvis hits cinemas on June 24, 2022.


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