Austin Butler Looked Up to Leonardo DiCaprio's Career When He Was Younger

Austin Butler is opening up about looking up to Leonardo DiCaprio.

The 31-year-old Oscar nominated Elvis star recently opened up about whose career he thought his would look like when he was a teenager doing auditions, and he noted Leo, who also started out at a young age.

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“I started looking at a lot of different people’s careers. And Leo, when I was about 15, became that guy, because he’d made that transition [from child actor]. Every film that he chose, you could see the level of passion that he still had for the work,” Austin shared with Vanity Fair. “And that’s been a surreal thing, looking back at what my dreams were when I was 15, and then getting to work with the people that he got to work with, getting to be on set with him. There’s a lot of these pinch-me moments in my life and that’s definitely one of them.”

“I remember being younger, being 16 or something, and comparing myself to what I saw in Leo’s career when he was 19 or something, going from Gilbert Grape and Basketball Diaries and then Titanic. I was 20 and I was looking back and going, ‘Oh, no, my dreams are never going to come true in the same way,’” he added.

“I mean, I had times where I just thought, Oh, maybe it’ll never happen or I’ll never get those opportunities. But now, in retrospect, I can look back and go, if I had some film that hit really big when I was younger, I wouldn’t have had to keep going back to the drawing board and saying, ‘How do you get better at this?’”

If you recall, Austin was actually in a movie with Leonardo, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, which featured quite the ensemble cast of big name celebs.

Back in February 2022, Austin was also seen hanging out with Leo and more during a night out in Hollywood.

Last summer, Austin revealed advice he got from Leo for working with Baz Luhrmann.