The movie Austin Butler called “incomparable”
The Disney Channel and Nickelodeon each have illustrious track records for producing child stars that go on to find tremendous success in the arenas of film, television, or music, with Austin Butler one of the latest names to have set their sights firmly on the top of the A-list.
The first time Butler ever played the lead role and took top billing in a movie, he ended up winning a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor in a Leading Role – Drama’ and a Bafta for ‘Best Actor in a Leading Role’, as well as securing an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’ thanks to his transformative central performance in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis.
That’s quite the way of announcing yourself to the world as a leading man to be reckoned with, making it unsurprising to discover that he’s drawn to the classics that themselves involve a huge transformation for the person playing the lead role. Naming the five movies that shaped who he became as an actor to A.Frame, Butler found himself weighing up a quartet of Martin Scorsese greats.
Explaining his decision, Butler admitted that he was “torn between saying Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy or Mean Streets” before elaborating on the 1980 masterpiece: “It’s that collaboration between young De Niro and Scorsese,” he said. “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.”
Focusing on both the macro and micro of De Niro’s performance, Butler’s intense preparations for Elvis owe no small debt of gratitude to the way in which Scorsese’s regular collaborator completely disappeared into the part of Jake LaMotta: “The freedom that I see when I watch him, the subtlety that he can have, and then, moments of explosion.”
Elaborating on how De Niro’s work is “so incredibly dynamic”, Butler noted how he “cannot take my eyes off of him” every second he’s on the screen, and his initial astonishment at the physicality required that’s become commonplace in the decades since for any actor playing a well-known real-life figure. He added: “Today, we may take it for granted more, but it’s really the first of its kind where they pause filming and he gains that weight. So, even the physical investment that he had in that film is really inspiring.”
On a technical level, Butler praised Raging Bull for the way in which “it’s beautifully shot” before professing his love for a variety of its other merits, including the musical score and stark monochromatic cinematography. However, above all, he celebrates how De Niro could always be relied upon to vanish entirely into the part of any Scorsese protagonist: “To see that range between one actor and director is just unfathomable, and really, truly inspiring to me”.
