Why can’t Austin Butler stop playing historical characters?

Austin Butler is in love with a special kind of man.

Because he is the actor behind them, they are undoubtedly tall and handsome. But they’re also typically staunch pillars of mid-century masculinity, who lived the bulk of their adult lives between 1940 and 1970, and in some way had to grapple with traditional representations of their gender.

He played this character elvis and yet to be released bike rider (Not mentioned is his tenure as a member of the Manson Family, Tex Watson Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Now, he doubles down on that trend with the role of pilot Major Gale ‘Buck’ Clevens in Apple TV+’s World War II drama. lord of air, The latest World War II miniseries from the producing team of Steven Spielberg, Gary Goetzman and Tom Hanks.

Butler told EW that he’s not just consciously choosing projects in this era, but that they keep coming to him. “For whatever reason, I stopped playing in this area for a while,” he says, “but there’s something that resonates with me. Many of my favorite movies were made around that time. The actors A lot of the people I look up to who influenced me from a young age – like Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Montgomery Clift, and Marlon Brando – are from that era. That whole time period made a huge impact on me.”

The movie star shares one important quality with those bastions of mid-century acting excellence – an uncanny ability to craft a preternatural calm that’s lifelike. Butler reflects this tendency in his performance, “I’m very still most of the time in my life and feel very sensitive to what’s going on around me.” “But I also have moments where, if I’m around the right people, I can be very sociable and I have a lot of energy. There are also times when I get very excited about something. But with static characters, what I do is always feel the love in other people’s performances when you’re able to channel it in some way where it doesn’t come across physically at times. It’s Coming out through your eyes and then finding those moments where you let it burst and let it explode.”

lord of air, Which will arrive on Apple TV+ with its first two episodes in January. 26, follows the U.S. Army Air Forces’ 100th Bomb Group, also known as the “Bloody Hundredth”. This is the Air Force companion piece band of Brothers And the Pacific, And it finds Butler thrust into the heat of battle as a bomber pilot.

Although the cast did not spend any time in the air, they logged many hours in flight simulators. “We had professional pilots there teaching us how everything worked,” Butler says. “At the time, I was confident I could take off and land an airplane, but there’s more to it than being in a flight simulator. I would definitely love to be able to do that.”

For now, viewers can watch Butler skyrocket on television.

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