Austin Butler Responds to Comments He Talks Like Elvis at Golden Globes: ‘I Don’t Think I Sound Like Him Still’
People are talking about how Austin Butler is talking. At the Golden Globes Tuesday (Jan. 10), however, the 31-year-old actor responded to comments regarding how his voice has changed since playing The King in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic, specifically addressing those who have been poking fun at him in recent months for supposedly keeping up the deep Southern drawl he learned for the movie long after it wrapped.
“I don’t think I sound like him still,” he said in the awards show’s press room after winning best actor, drama motion picture for his performance in Elvis. “But I guess I must because I hear it a lot. I often liken it to when somebody lives in another country for a long time.”
“I had three years where that was my only focus in life, so I’m sure there’s just pieces of my DNA that will always be linked to him,” he added.
It’s not the first time Butler has addressed comments on his post-Elvis speech patterns. In December, he joked about his voice change during his opening monologue while hosting Saturday Night Live, and in June, he spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the matter. “At this point, I keep asking people, ‘Is this my voice?’ Because this feels like my real … it’s one of those things where certain things trigger it, and other times as well it’s, I don’t know,” he said.
One night prior to the Globes, the Carrie Diaries star appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live and shed some light on the intensive process he underwent to prepare for his portrayal of the late rock n’ roll legend, which included reconstructing the way he spoke. He even spent hours learning to chuckle exactly like Elvis did by listening to audio compilations of the “Hound Dog” singer’s laughter.
“I’d walk down the beach for hours with a headphone in, laughing as Elvis,” he recalled. “So it looked like [I was] this man, just absolutely out of his mind.”
Watch Austin Butler address comments about his Elvis voice at the Golden Globes below:
Hannah Dailey
Billboard
