Austin Butler Credits Two Actors For Helping Him Escape Method Acting
Austin Butler is opening up about putting method acting behind him.
When working on his 2022 movie Elvis, the 34-year-old actor admitted that his method acting got so extreme that he didn’t talk to his family for years and he was “rushed to the hospital” due to his body “shutting down.”
In a new interview with Men’s Health, Austin credited two actors for helping him pull away from method acting.
Keep reading to find out more…“For a long time, I felt that it had to be a tortured process and I would come out the other side broken,” Austin explained. “Rather than just putting parts of yourself away and trying to pretend that they don’t exist, it’s like going into the gross bits of yourself — going into the bits that you don’t want to look at — and finding a way of integrating that into the whole.”
While working on his new movie Enemies, which he stars in alongside Jeremy Allen White, Austin said that he decided to create more balance in his life.
To help unwind, Austin said that he turns to working out and taking a cold shower, both of which helped him fall asleep easier. The Oscar-nominated actor learned these tips after observing his The Bikeriders co-star Tom Hardy.
“After shooting all night, Hardy would go home, put on a weighted vest and do 1,000 box jumps,” Austin recalled, adding that he also needs to step outside and get some some.
“I’m just trying to find little things like that,” he said. “Sometimes it’s the mundane little things.”
Jeremy noted, “I think Austin is at this point in his life where doing the best work he can is very important, and I think it always will be, but I think he’s searching for some stability in life as well.”
While he hasn’t worked with her yet, Austin also credited Laura Dern, who he met at an event, for helping him see that when he’s “exploring the shadow self” in a heavier role, that doesn’t mean it has to “destroy the rest of his life.”
“She’s helping me more and more to see that you can come out the other side,” Austin said, “and maybe bits of you have healed, and synthesized, and metabolized. It can be therapeutic, in a way.”
Also in the new interview, Austin recalled a terrifying incident on a flight when he thought he was “dying.”
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