Austin Butler couldn't help but falling in love with his no-brow look.
The Elvis actor recently shared insight into his epic transformation for Dune: Part Two, in which he looks unrecognizable without eyebrows and a completely bald head to play villain Feyd-Rautha—the heir of Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) and the brother of Glossu Rabban (Dave Bautista).
"It was so liberating not having eyebrows," Austin admitted on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Feb. 1, adding, "You don't realize how much they weigh you down. I was just streamlined."
And contrary to popular belief, Austin revealed he didn't shave his eyebrows for the Dune the role.
"I was going to a job right after," he explained, "and this director named Jeff Nichols said, 'They can afford to make you bald cap but we can't really make you hair. So, can you just get a bald cap?' So that's what I did."
Austin noted Dune's hair and makeup team sculpted a special bald cap to conceal his eyebrows. But there was a trade-off for not actually shedding his locks.
"It was three hours a day," he revealed of the time it took to get him ready, "and that was when they brought it down."
"So, what you're saying is you made a sacrifice for this film," host Jimmy Kimmel said, "and it would be nice if people went and saw it."
As Austin put it, "That's exactly right."
Luckily for the Oscar nominee, getting out of his Dune character has been a smoother transition than when he portrayed Elvis in Baz Luhrmann's 2022 biopic.
"I had a dialect coach just to help me not sound like Elvis," Austin admitted on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Jan. 24. "It was a whole thing."
In fact, the Golden Globe winner revealed he did more than sound like the late music legend and chose to practice method acting.
"I was just trying to remember who I was," Austin explained. "I was trying to remember what I liked to do. All I thought about was Elvis for three years."
Keep reading to see everything Austin has said about playing the King of Rock 'n' Roll.
Before Elvis was released in June 2022, Austin Butler warned moviegoers that he couldn't exactly shake his transformation of Elvis Presley off. "At this point, I keep asking people, ‘Is this my voice?' because this feels like my real [voice]," he told Entertainment Tonight the same month. "It's one of those things where certain things trigger it."
When signing up for the Elvis role, Austin had one goal in mind. "When I began the process of this, I set out to make my voice identical to his," he told The AU Review in May 2022. "That was my goal, that if you heard a recording of him and heard a recording of me, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference."
After Austin's publicist warned him about the conversation on social media surrounding his accent, the actor made it clear he was "getting rid" of it. It just won't happen overnight. "I have probably damaged my vocal cords with all that singing," he said on BBC One's Graham Norton Show in February 2023. "One song took 40 takes."
Still not satisfied with Austin's explanation? He has another reason. "I guess after three years of doing everything that I could to focus on this one goal of trying to bring life to Elvis in this film, I think that there's certain muscular habits that must pop up," he told the Los Angeles Times in January 2022. "If I was trying to sound like Elvis, I would sound very different right now. I think it's sort of amusing to me how much people want to focus on this one thing."
After winning the 2023 Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama Film, the actor was asked about his accent again backstage. "I often liken it to when somebody lives in another country for a long time," he explained in the press room. "I had three years where [Elvis] was my only focus in life, so I'm sure there's just pieces of my DNA that will always be linked in that way."
"What you saw in that Golden Globes speech, that's him," Austin's voice coach Irene Bartlett told ABC's Gold Coast in January 2023. "It's genuine, it's not put on. I feel sorry people are saying that it's still acting [but] he's actually taken [the voice] on board. I don't know how long that will last, or if it's going to be there forever."
Perhaps the secret to bidding farewell to the accent is earning a new acting role. "I know that I'm constantly changing," he told ELLE Australia in June 2022. "Check in with me in 20 years when I've played a lot of roles, who knows what I'll sound like!"