James Dean in East of Eden, Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Montgomery Clift in anything—Austin Butler speaks of them with reverence, and a sense of nostalgia for something he never possessed. “The days where you didn’t know so much about people? I long for that.”
Boots by Stetson.
Photographer Theo Wenner. Fashion Editor Tom Guinness.
His 3.9 million Instagram followers notwithstanding, Butler is an analog guy in a digital world. Darren Aronofsky, who directed him in this year’s Caught Stealing, has said that seeing Butler using a cell phone is like watching Joe Biden use one. “I am not on my phone,” Butler confirms to me. “It can be a good thing, and it can be a bad thing. When I’m with you, I’m completely with you, in person. But then when I’m away, it’s as though you’ve got to send a carrier pigeon or something.”
When we speak—not via carrier pigeon—he’s beaming in from a sunny California home, backdropped by an anodyne kitchen and wearing a crisp white T. The brow ridge is prominent, the jaw expressive, the blue eyes obliging. He shifts easily between smoldering attentiveness and a goofy, nose-scrunched laugh—bringing to mind his ability to draw focus whether he’s slow-dancing with a husky (in a promo clip for the 2024 series Masters of the Air) or going all-in as a bald, black-toothed psychopath (in Dune: Part Two). As Austin Butler, he’s a self-identified shy person with abundant charisma, which he turns on in any number of interviews with costars and media. He’s a glutton for other people’s lives: “That’s why, right now, I want to ask you a ton of questions.”
Is this tendency to shun attention self-protective? “Maybe there’s some deeper childhood thing in there,” he says, “but often I just find other people so fascinating.” He is charmed, for instance, by “everything.” Curiosity. Passion. The way someone twirls their pasta. “When people make little noises when they eat. ‘Mm, mm!’” He laughs. We’re 45 minutes into the conversation, and a level of comfort has been reached. “I love to watch somebody blush. That’s one of the most amazing things.” I tell him I can’t cosign this, as someone who goes frequently crimson. “I noticed,” he says. “Right to the surface.”
There is a certain fated quality to Butler’s rise: how he grew up between the sprawling amusement parks of Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, and used to get a buck from his dad for each Turner Classic Movie he recorded onto a VHS tape. How he caught his first break on Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana, and hit the big time in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood, wearing a cowboy hat, riding a horse, and sharing scenes with Brad Pitt. (The day we speak, TMZ reports that Butler just purchased a $5.2 million minimalist manse from Pitt.)
