Denis Villeneuve and Austin Butler discuss method acting for ‘Dune: Part Two’
Actor Austin Butler was widely praised for his performance as Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic, and he has met yet another transformative effort in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two.
Butler plays the sociopathic villain Feyd-Rautha, nephew of Baron Vladimir Harkennon, and in a recent interview with The Los Angeles Times, both he and his director spoke of his method acting.
“With Feyd, I knew that that would be unhealthy for my family and friends,” Butler said. “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.”
The actor added: “That’s not to say that it doesn’t bleed into your life. But I knew that I wasn’t going to do anything dangerous outside of that boundary, and in a way that allowed me to go deeper.”
Villeneuve then noted: “When the camera was on, it was like you were possessed. 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.”
In Far Out’s review of Dune Part Two, we wrote of Butler, “Butler actually manages to steal the show at certain moments as the film’s new antagonist, a deranged and violent psychopath handed reign of Arakkis by his uncle, and he admirably displays a fetishist sex appeal, an impressive physicality in Gladiator-esque moments, and an utterly psychotic attitude all in the same breath.”
The review continued, “Dune simply has to be seen on the big screen to be truly experienced; any lesser viewing negates its Lawrence of Arabia-indebted cinematography, captivating action sequences and a score of a stultifying, almost deafening quality.”
Check out the trailer for Dune: Part Two below.
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