Austin Butler put his life on hold for 2 years for Elvis Presley role in 'obsession'

msn.com:

Austin Butler has revealed he ‘put his life on hold for two years to prepare for the role of Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic celebrating the music legend.

The 30-year-old actor said he studied the late icon so intensely he ‘fell down a rabbit hole of obsession’ in order to unearth his ‘humanity’ for the big screen.

Speaking at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival this week, Austin told reporters: ‘I basically put the rest of my life on pause for two years and I just absorbed everything possibly could. ‘I just went down the rabbit hole of obsession.

And I broke down his life into periods of time where I could hear the differences in how his voice changed over the years and how his movement changed over the years and I spent two years studying, trying to find his humanity as best as I could through that. ’The Once Upon A Time in Hollywood star added that it was ‘tricky’ to separate the mythology from the real person, such was the legacy of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. ‘The tricky thing is you see Elvis as this icon, or as the wallpaper of society and finding a way to strip all of that away and find the very human nature of him that was deeper than all of that, that’s what was fascinating for me. ’He said he had placed ‘unrealistic expectations’ himself to bring Elvis to life, recalling: ‘When I first started, I put these unrealistic expectations onmyself that somehow, if I worked hard enough, I could make my faceidentical to Elvis’ face.