Austin Butler Biography

Austin Butler is the actor best known for playing music legend Elvis Presley in the 2022 biopic Elvis.

Austin Butler grew up in Anaheim, miles south of Hollywood, and as a young teen began acting in Nickelodeon and Disney Channel shows like iCarly and Hannah Montana. He landed a bigger regular role (2007-08) on the Nickelodeon show Zoey 101 (with Jamie Lynn Spears) and soon enough was guest-starring on shows like CSI: Miami and The Wizards of Waverly Place.

In the 2010s, Butler was all over the place in short-lived shows like the Sex and the City prequel The Carrie Diaries (2013-14) and the fantasy drama The Shannara Chronicles (2016-2017). He started to get real traction in 2018 when he appeared on Broadway in the classic Eugene O’Neill drama The Iceman Cometh. The next year he was sharing scenes with Brad Pitt while playing Tex Watson, the Charles Manson family member who comes to a bad end in the Quentin Tarantino movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

That set him up for the job of a lifetime: the title role in Elvis, directed by Baz Luhrmann and co-starring Tom Hanks and Olivia DeJonge. Butler played Elvis all the way from the bold and charming young hotshot of the 1950s to the bloated and aging superstar he became in the 1970s. Butler sang many of Elvis’s songs in the film, and his tour de force of a performance led to a 2023 Academy Award nomination as best actor.