By Garry Maddox
With Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis a worldwide box office hit widely tipped to feature at the Oscars, the two stars who played Elvis and Priscilla, Austin Butler and Australia’s Olivia DeJonge, have been racking up promising new roles.
Butler, the Californian who played the legendary singer, has been busy shooting a mini-series about a World War II bomber crew, Masters of the Air, and a movie about a 1960s motorcycle club, The Bike Riders. He has also been cast in the sci-fi epic Dune: Part Two.
Olivia DeJonge backstage at the Hordern Pavilion, where the AACTA Awards will be held.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
And DeJonge, who played Priscilla Presley, has starred in the mini-series The Staircase and is set to feature in American movie The Trashers, about a mobster who owns an infamous ice hockey team.
But her breakout role in Elvis, which has the 24-year-old up for an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Award for best supporting actress in Sydney on Wednesday, almost didn’t happen.
DeJonge had done what is now standard for actors - self-taping an audition in 2019.
Having heard nothing for three months, she had been wondering who’d won the role when her agent sent a text while she was having dinner in Los Angeles to say she’d been cast.
“We were like, ‘wait, what?’,” DeJonge said. “Then there were some scheduling problems with another project I was doing, and I was almost not going to be able to do the film.
“Then there was the pandemic. But it all turned out how it was supposed to.”
Almost three years later, DeJonge sat beside the real Priscilla Presley at the world premiere of Elvis at the Cannes Film Festival.
“It was really, really surreal,” she said. “To sit next to somebody watching part of their life play out was really beautiful and special.”
Austin Butler and Olivia DeJonge as Elvis and Priscilla in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis.Credit: Warner Bros
After a successful run in cinemas - becoming the second highest-grossing musical biopic around the world behind Bohemian Rhapsody - Elvis is now figuring in awards.
After winning seven trophies at the AACTA Industry Awards on Monday, it expected to score at least best film, director and actor at the main awards at the Hordern Pavilion on Wednesday.
Also up for best film are the imaginative romance Three Thousand Years Of Longing, fierce Indigenous western The Drover’s Wife The Legend Of Molly Johnson, intense drama The Stranger, horror comedy Sissy and the western suburbs anthology drama Here Out West.
The ABC’s Mystery Road: Origin, which leads the television nominations with 15, is up for best drama series against Bump, The Tourist and Wolf Like Me (all on Stan), Heartbreak High (Netflix) and Love Me (Binge, Foxtel).
Catherine Martin, who won for best costumes and production design for Elvis at the industry ceremony, will receive the Longford Lyell Award for her “outstanding global contribution and influence” in film.
AACTA president Russell Crowe will present Thor star Chris Hemsworth with the Trailblazer Award for his outstanding career and contribution to the screen industry.
Hollywood pundits have Elvis as a potential Oscar nominee for best picture, actor, costume design, production design and possibly editing.
“To feel how much this movie means to people is really quite touching,” DeJonge said. “I don’t think we made this film searching for awards but it’s certainly well deserved. I’m incredibly proud of it.”
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Email Garry Maddox at gmaddox@smh.com.au and follow him on Twitter at @gmaddox.