Austin Butler started out his career with Nickelodeon and Disney as a child actor. He has since climbed up the ladder, breaking through to adult roles in big movies such as Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
His personal life has also been on display, due to his longstanding relationship with fellow Disney star Vanesa Hudgens, and more recently a possible relationship with Lily-Rose Depp after pictures surfaced of the pair.
However, his upcoming movie, the long-awaited Elvis Presley biopic from Baz Luhrmann, is likely to make him a household name.
Who Is Austin Butler?
Austin Butler is a 29-year-old actor from California.
His career began as a child actor in the Nickelodeon series Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide. He played Lionel Scranton in the second and third seasons of the show.
His character was mainly in the background, but he was given a slightly more important guest role in Hannah Montana after this, opposite Miley Cyrus.
He played Derek Hanson in the episode "My Best Friend's Boyfriend" from the second season, in which he takes Miley on her worst date ever.
Butler then earned a starring role in the fourth season of Zoey 101, playing the love interest of main character Zoey, played by Jamie Lynn Spears.
As with many Disney and Nickelodeon stars, he appeared in a number of the shows from Selena Gomez's Wizards of Waverley Place to Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure, a spin-off of the High School Musical franchise.
He moved into slightly less child-focused roles in the early 2000s, playing small roles in The Santa Clause movies, Sex and the City prequel The Carrie Diaries and The CW's Arrow.
He had his Broadway debut in 2018 opposite Denzel Washington in The Iceman Cometh.
In 2019, he got his biggest role, playing a fictional version of Tex Watson in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Watson was one of the group of Charles Manson's followers who killed actress Sharon Tate and four others in Hollywood, and after that killed couple Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their home.
He was part of the Manson family and is still in prison to this day.
Butler's performance in this role received a great deal of acclaim, and in the same year he appeared in Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die opposite Adam Driver.
After his appearance in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, it was announced he had been named the star of Baz Luhrmann's new Elvis biopic.
He will play The King opposite Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla Presley and Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker.
Speaking to Deadline about Butler's casting, Luhrmann said: "Throughout the casting process, it was an honor for me to encounter such a vast array of talent.
"I had heard about Austin Butler from his stand-out role opposite Denzel Washington in The Iceman Cometh on Broadway, and through a journey of extensive screen testing and music and performance workshops, I knew unequivocally that I had found someone who could embody the spirit of one of the world's most iconic musical figures."
Others reported to have auditioned against Butler were One Direction singer Harry Styles, Ansel Elgort and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
Butler will also lead the cast of war miniseries Masters of the Air, which will follow the Eighth Air Force during the Second World War.
Outside of acting, he has been romantically linked to fellow Disney star Vanessa Hudgens for much of his life, though in 2020 it was reported that they had parted ways.
In recent days he has been pictured with Lily-Rose Depp in London.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
