Austin Butler slept on the trap set to put himself in the shoes of his character

“During one night, I had the whole apartment for me,” said the actor, accustomed to the Method Acting.

He has a very special approach to the profession.

He learned to speak with the characteristic accent of Elvis during the whole shooting of Elvis. He trained with a Navy Seal to embody the formidable Feyd-Rautha in Dune: Part 2. And Austin Butler pushed realism even further to Trapped (Caught Stealing in VO). In this upcoming thriller, Butler plays Hank, a former baseball player who has become a bartender. And to better soak up the character, he immediately asked to sleep on the set, that is to say in Hank’s apartment, in the New York district of East Village. He tells in Variety:

“During one night, I had the whole apartment for me. I listened to music, I danced, I ate Chinese dishes. It gave me the impression of really living there. I slept there all night, and I woke up with the team that arrived when I was still underwear.”

To Butler, sleeping on the set location was essential to its process:

“What changed is that it was no longer a tray. When you shoot a film, everything conspires against you: the lights, the camera, the ceiling open for lighting … It is tempting to look around and break the illusion. The more I can be wrong myself, believe myself really, the better.”

While his previous roles required physical and accents, Caught Stealingwhich comes out this August 29 in theaters, shows Austin Butler more or less as it is in life: charming, charismatic and irresistibly attractive.

“It made me littleR “, he admits. “I am very shy at the base, and playing characters allowed me to put another skin, another voice, to become someone else. It gave me freedom. But to embody a character close to me left me without escape and made me vulnerable.”

Besides, on the set, Darren Aronofsky confides that his biggest instruction was not to go too far in the Method Acting:

“Austin goes very deeply in roles and characters. Sometimes I asked him to relax a little to keep a certain natural.”

Because the director wanted to make a film “Sur someone we can identify with. “ Aronofsky describes Hank, his hero, like “A good guy. He doesn’t hurt anyone. He’s just a little provincial guy in a big city, and the world collapses around him. It’s nice to have a hero without cape, someone normaL.”

Caught Stealingto see in the cinema this Wednesday.