Although Brendan Fraser (The Whale) was the favorite to win the awards season, including the Oscar for Best Actor, another performer was emerging as a strong candidate: Austin Butler, thanks to his leading role in Elvis. The film exceeded expectations in the nominations, and the perception of critics and audiences is that Butler made a worthy portrait of the so-called “King of Rock.”
So tonight at the 2023 Golden Globes, the award given to Austin has been more than fair. The lists of predictions that appeared in different media since the announcement of the nominees gave the young actor the winner. And it is that since his performance in the Baz Luhrmann tape it became clear that it was not an imitation or faithful personification, Butler put his heart into it. Elvis had several nominations, including Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Directing and Best Actor for Austin Butler.
Fortunately, the Hollywood Foreign Press likes to crown emerging talents like him, and they also love movies about famous musicians. There the awards to Jamie Foxx (as Ray Charles in Ray), Joaquin Phoenix (as Johnny Cash in Johnny & June: Passion and Madness, Reese Witherspoon (as June Carter Cash in Johnny & June: Passion and Madness), Marion Cotillard (as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose ), Renée Zellweger (as Judy Garland in Judy ), Rami Malek (as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody: The Freddie Mercury Story ), Andra Day (as Billie Holiday in The United States vs. Billie Holiday ), and Taron Egerton (as Elton John in Rocketman ), who have won for their roles in biopics over the past 20 years.
According to an exclusive interview with the Los Angeles Times, since 2019 Butler already had Elvis on his mind. A friend of his heard him sing “Blue Christmas” and it motivated him to seek to bring the icon to life one day. Elvis seemed to be everywhere, but he was a dream role that seemed impossible. Then his agent told him that Baz Luhrmann was preparing a movie about the life of Elvis Presley and the actor suspended all auditions and meetings for the next five months to focus on landing the role of his life. In that same talk, the actor who was 27 years old when he got the role confessed:
«I bet everything. He knew the only way he could do it was if she gave him everything she had.”
When Luhrmann saw the performance of Butler, a young actor he knew nothing about, he said it “didn’t feel like an audition,” “it felt like a hidden camera.”
About Butler’s performance, David Ehrlich said on IndieWire:
Butler’s Elvis Presley is the best thing about this movie, even if it stopped at mimicry, but the actor does more than nail Presley’s singing voice and stage presence; he also manages to challenge them, slipping from the iconography and giving the film the opportunity to create a new emotional context ».
