"I was with my partner at the time": Austin Butler reveals it was ex Vanessa Hudgens who motivated him to play Elvis

31-year-old American actor Austin Butler turned quite a few heads with his performance in biopic Elvis in 2022. The uncanny resemblance between the late King of Pop and the High School Musical starrer has been the talk of Hollywood.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times on January 24, 2023, the Oscar-nominated actor spoke about starring in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, what inspired him to go for the role, and his indebtedness to a certain someone.

Austin Butler acknowledged in the interview that he was, at the time of accepting the role, in a relationship with Vanessa Hudgens.

"I was with my partner at the time," the actor confessed.

"I was with my partner at the time," the actor credits Vanessa Hudgens (Image via Warner Brothers)

Continuing the conversation, Austin Butler went on to say that the couple had been in a relationship for a very long time and Vanessa Hudgens's intuition just clicked.

It was she who had commented upon his similarities with Elvis and pointed out how he was the perfect actor for the role.

"We'd been together for so long and she had this sort of clairvoyant moment" (Image via Getty)

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"We'd been together for so long and she had this sort of clairvoyant moment...," Austin Butler added.

Austin Butler referred to ex Vanessa Hudgens as a "friend" in a previous interview

Previously on January 10, 2023, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Austin Butler refrained from directly referencing ex while crediting her for the role.

The actor narrated:

"The month before I heard that Baz was making the movie, I was going to look at Christmas lights with a friend, and there was an Elvis Christmas song on the radio and I was singing along, and my friend looked over at me and goes, 'You've got to play Elvis.'"

Although broken up now, in the interview with Los Angeles Times, Austin Butler acknowledged his indebtedness to ex Hudgens for her unwavering faith and belief in him, and for inspiring in him the confidence to approach the role and consequently bag an opportunity of a lifetime.

"I owe her a lot for believing in me," Butler said.

At the time that Butler bagged the role, Vanessa Hudgens took to Instagram to share her support and revealed her excitement at what the future held for the Elvis actor.

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Austin Butler and Vanessa Hudgens relationship timeline

Butler and Vanessa Hudgens dated for almost eight years before ending things over busy schedules. Their relationship timeline dates back to 2011 when they began making red carpet appearances at events and were even seen going to Coachella together.

They were first linked together as a couple when they appeared for Ashley Tisdale's sister's birthday party in 2011. But way before they began dating, the duo had already met one another on the set of High School Musical in 2005.

Austin Butler and Vanessa Hudgens met on the set of High School Musical (Images via Getty and IMDb respectively)

Vanessa Hudgens is presently engaged to MLB player Cole Tucker. The couple was first spotted together in 2020, and the two made things official very quickly. The couple confirmed getting engaged at the end of 2022.

Vanessa Hudgens is now engaged to Cole Tucker (Image via Getty)

Rumors of Butler dating model Kaia Gerber broke the internet when the two were spotted together attending a yoga class in December 2021, just a month after Gerber broke up with Jacob Elordi.

Since then the couple has made several public appearances and as things stand now, they are still going strong.

Austin Butler is currently dating Kaia Gerber (Image via Getty)

It seems that from the ex-couple's near decade-long relationship, a star was born, and that star is Butler, whose performance as Elvis brought him astronomical fame, an Oscar nomination, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA win for Best Actor in a Leading Role.