Playing Elvis Presley got Austin Butler all shook up in the worst kind of way. “My body just started shutting down the day after I finished ‘Elvis,” he told GQ. He had the symptoms of appendicitis but was diagnosed with a virus that left him confined to bed for a week with a bloody cough, per Esquire. By then, Butler had put his body and mind under an enormous amount of stress. “I didn’t sleep for two years. I would wake up at three or four in the morning every day in terror, and then get to work because I wanted to be incredibly meticulous,” he told Screen Daily.
One of Butler’s “Elvis” co-stars, Tom Hanks, became concerned about what was going to happen to Butler once filming ended and he was forced to drop his single-minded pursuit of pelvis-swiveling perfection cold-turkey. In an interview with The Times, Butler recalled Hanks telling him, “For your mental health, it would be wise to go straight into something else.” Dr. Hanks’ prescription just happened to be a miniseries he was producing, “Masters of the Air.” Butler got wiped out by his nasty illness right before he was supposed to start shooting but was allowed time to recover — and perhaps he worked on exorcising Presley’s ghost from his ailing body. “I had a bit of an existential crisis when I finished [filming ‘Elvis’], and real grief,” Butler told TheWrap. “I missed him.”
