Austin Butler 'drank' ice-cream to gain weight for Elvis: 'Heard Ryan Gosling did it'

Austin Butler has been nominated at the 95th Academy Awards in the Best Actor category for his role as the classic rock legend Elvis Presley. The biopic is named Elvis and has been directed by Baz Luhrmann. Butler has managed to impress both fans and critics for his transformation as he played Presley to perfection. The actor pushed his limits for the role and underwent a physical transformation. In a recent interview, Butler shared how he gained weight to look like Presley in the movie. 

Butler, who will be seen in Dune Part 2, had earlier shared that his vocal chords were damaged after doing many retakes for recording Presley's songs in the movie. Now, the actor said that he "drank" ice-cream to gain additional weight for the role.

He said that the inspiration for weight gain came from Ryan Gosling, who drank liquid ice-cream to pack on additional pounds for his film The Lovely Bones. Sharing his expereince of weight gain for Presley, Butler told Variety, "I heard that Ryan Gosling when he was going to do The Lovely Bones, had microwaved Haagen-Dazs and would drink it."

"So I started doing that. I would go get two dozen doughnuts and eat them all. I really started to pack some pounds. It's fun for a week, and then you feel awful about yourself. But we were planning on shooting chronologically in the beginning. That quickly went out the window with COVID. It was just impossible," Butler added. 

Elvis has picked up 8 Oscar nominations at the upcoming 95th edition of the Hollywood Awards show. Apart from a Best Actor nod for Butler, Elvis is also gunning in various technical categories like Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Costumes, Sound and Cinematography.