Austin Butler Reveals The Advice Leonardo DiCaprio Gave Him About Baz Luhrmann

Austin Butler, star of the biopic Elvis, has revealed that Leonardo DiCaprio offered him some accurate advice concerning Baz Luhrmann’s directing style.

Just days after Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis was released, Austin Butler – who stars as the King of Rock and Roll – has now shared the wise advice Leonardo DiCaprio once gave him.

Both Butler and DiCaprio starred in the Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood and while they were filming, Butler knew that his next role was going to be Elvis in Luhrmann’s film.

Knowing that DiCaprio had worked with Luhrmann twice – on the films Romeo + Juliet and The Great Gatsby – Butler asked DiCaprio for some words of wisdom.

In an interview with EW, Butler said, “Leo told me, ‘Baz is going to constantly keep you off balance and it’s going to pull things out of you [that] you never knew you had inside you.’”

Butler is being praised by critics for his performance in *Elvis*. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Butler went on to say that DiCaprio’s advice was spot on.

“That’s exactly the experience I had. There were days where I just thought, ‘Baz, why don’t we just do what we prepared?’ I realized that he would push me right to the edge of what I was capable of. You capture lightning in a bottle in a way; if you had just done the thing that you had prepared, it may have been more stale.”
Austin Butler

Of course, Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet was the film that catapulted DiCaprio to ‘A-List movie star’ status and it looks like Luhrmann’s Elvis is going to do the same with Butler; there are even rumours that Butler will win the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Elvis.

And if Butler does win, it’ll be interesting to see whether Butler thanks DiCaprio for warning him about Luhrmann’s directing style in his acceptance speech…