The Robert De Niro movies that shaped Austin Butler’s acting style: “It’s just incomparable”
Every once in a while, a young actor comes along and completely changes everything. One example from this current generation is Austin Butler.
Following a brief appearance in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (along with about 500 other future stars), Butler firmly cemented himself as a force to be reckoned with when he starred as the titular character in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. Since his breakthrough turn as the ‘King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’, Butler’s career has gone from strength to strength, with appearances in movies like The Bikeriders and Dune: Part Two.
It wasn’t always glitz and glamour for the chiselled idol. Things didn’t always go his way, like the time he auditioned for The Hunger Games and didn’t even get a callback. He plied his trade as a young star in Nickelodeon shows like Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, Drake & Josh, and iCarly, as well as the High School Musical spin-off, Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure. There’s nothing wrong with this—the ‘HSM‘ franchise is right up there with The Godfather and Star Wars—but hardly the resume of a future Oscar nominee.
Butler always had faith in himself, however, and kept pushing to reach that next level. He took inspiration from some of the greats. He is famously a fan of Heath Ledger’s performance as Joker in The Dark Knight, and, as it turns out, he also owes a lot of his success to another icon of the big screen.
In an interview with The Academy, Butler was asked to reveal his top five movies of all time. Alongside John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, he opted for the Martin Scorsese/Robert De Niro classic Raging Bull. He chose to focus his praise on its leading man, not just in this movie, but across his entire career.
“I was torn between saying Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy or Mean Streets,” he said, naming four of the ten feature-length collaborations between the two New York natives. “It’s just incomparable the amount of talent and inspiration that I’ve felt from those films, and particularly with Raging Bull, because the dedication that he had to that part is so endlessly inspiring to me. The freedom that I see when I watch him, the subtlety that he can have, and then moments of explosion. And it’s so incredibly dynamic. I cannot take my eyes off of him.”
De Niro stars in Raging Bull as Jake LaMotta, a real-life Italian middleweight boxing champion whose life story captivated the actor when he first read about it. Much has been written about the insane preparation the actor underwent for the role, including hours of legitimate boxing training and gaining 60lbs to play an older LaMotta. It all paid off in the end, as the star was rewarded with his first (and only) ‘Best Actor’ Oscar in 1981. His performance is also widely regarded as one of the greatest of all time.
For those wondering, the other two movies Butler selected were Pulp Fiction, perhaps a nod to his old boss, and the James Dean film East of Eden, which shouldn’t be a major shock, considering he is basically Dean reincarnated.
