Here's Where You Know The Cast Of Elvis From
When Elvis Presley launched his career in the 1950s, he could never have imagined that his image would become as iconic as it has, replicated thousands of times across Las Vegas stage shows, countless Elvis impersonation contests and conventions, and statues at Hollywood Blvd. souvenir shops. Actors from Kurt Russell to Jonathan Rhys Meyers have played the King on screen, and fans still make regular pilgrimages to Graceland, his home in Memphis, TN, more than 40 years after his untimely death.
In 2022, Elvis-obsessed audiences finally got a chance to see Baz Lurhmann's long-awaited glitzy biopic of the rock superstar, the matter-of-factly titled "Elvis." Luhrmann's vision premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and immediately set the internet alight, with discussion reaching a fever pitch over a reported mashup of "Hound Dog" with "Backstreet's Back" and Britney Spears' "Toxic." Makes sense to us; after all, Luhrmann is the man who set his version of "The Great Gatsby" to music by Fergie, Jay-Z, and Kanye West!
With the film poised to launch the careers of several of its stars, and with a cast made up in part of musicians rather than actors, audiences may be wondering where (or whether!) they've seen these famous faces before. Crank up the "Jailhouse Rock" and read on for a rundown of where you know the cast of "Elvis" from.
Tom Hanks plays Colonel Tom Parker
If you only recognize one actor in "Elvis," it's probably Tom Hanks. Hanks has been working consistently since the '80s, starting with his role on a sitcom called "Bosom Buddies." He rose to fame that decade as the lead in classic films like "Splash," "Big," and "The 'Burbs," and widespread critical recognition soon followed. The '90s brought Oscar wins for "Forrest Gump" and "Philadelphia," as well as a nomination for "Saving Private Ryan." He's been in "Sleepless in Seattle," "Toy Story," "Cast Away," and "The Da Vinci Code."
He's as A-List as they come, in other words, and he told NPR's "1A" that the way he got there was by learning how to decline projects that didn't challenge him. "The only way I could shape my career was by saying no to things I didn't want to do," he said, noting it can be easy to accept a job simply because it pays money. "But to look at somebody and say, 'I've done it already, I'm repeating myself, it's not going to advance me along anymore and I'm in this for something other than that,' then you gotta say no."
In "Elvis," Hanks plays Colonel Tom Parker, the hip-shaking crooner's manager. Hanks' participation in the movie made headlines years before it hit theaters; the star was in Australia filming the biopic when he and his wife, actor and singer Rita Wilson, became the first celebrities to go public with a COVID-19 diagnosis.
Elvis is played by Austin Butler
Austin Butler is poised to have a breakout year thanks to his "Elvis" role as Elvis himself, a performance which drew rave reviews after the movie's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The review in IGN, for example, suggests that the film's lead deserves some major awards-season love. Director Baz Luhrmann agrees that his star was perfect for the part; the Aussie told GQ, "Elvis was an intensely spiritual person, and I think Austin has a really spiritual quality to him. He has a very sensitive and big inner life. He's very lovely on the outside, but you know there's deep thinking going on, on the inside."
Before "Elvis," Butler mostly worked on television. Fans may recognize him from a number of childhood favorite TV shows, including arcs on "Zoey 101," "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide," and an appearance on "iCarly." He led the casts of "The Carrie Diaries" and "The Shannara Chronicles," and, most recently, he terrified viewers as the murderous Manson acolyte Tex Watson in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood." Talking about that role with Schön!, Butler admitted, "The real challenge when playing a person who did these monstrous things is to not judge them while you're playing them. Afterwards, I can judge or before I can judge, but not in the midst of it."
Butler may be known to fans of celeb gossip for another reason; he dated Vanessa Hudgens for almost a decade (per E! News).
Olivia DeJonge is having a buzzy 2022
Priscilla Presley was only 14 when she first met The King of Rock 'n' Roll, the man who would become her husband seven years later. Olivia DeJonge, who plays Presley in Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis," is closer in age to her co-star than her real-life counterpart; they're only seven years apart, as opposed to ten. DeJonge told Women's Wear Daily that she found the experience to have been a life-changing one, explaining, "Priscilla has this effortless vulnerability and this effortless softness about her. Prior to the job, I was quite — not brash, brash isn't the right word, but maybe a little flighty and a little skittish. ... After we wrapped, I carried a lot of that with me."
Presley isn't the only real-life character DeJonge brought to the screen in 2022; she also stars in HBO's true-crime miniseries "The Staircase" as Caitlin, one of the daughters of Kathleen, the woman who is found dead at the bottom of the titular staircase. She told UPI that the show's sensitive handling of the real-life victim at the center of the story is what drew her in. "The way that they really respected Kathleen ... and brought her to the forefront of the narrative and honored her was 100% why I wanted to do it," she said.
DeJonge is otherwise best known for starring in Netflix's "The Society" as Elle, for a horror film called "Better Watch Out," and for leading M. Night Shyamalan's found-footage horror "The Visit."
Kodi Smit-McPhee is Jimmie Rodgers Snow
In "Elvis," Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee plays Jimmie Rodgers Snow, son of country superstar Hank Snow (per GQ) and a bit of a rival to the King. Smit-McPhee was excited to work with Baz Luhrmann, telling Newsweek that he was in awe on set. "It was absolutely overwhelming in the best way possible. To see how he works, how he flies by the seat of his pants, and how he has this spontaneous creativity that he just runs with. ... He just flies with his gut and it's an amazing thing to see because he absolutely pulls it off."
Smit-McPhee has been acting since he was a child, having appeared in films like "The Road" and "Let Me In." He provided the voice behind "ParaNorman," and he played Nightcrawler in "X-Men: Apocalypse" and "X-Men: Dark Phoenix." He rose to significant prominence in 2021 thanks to his role as Peter Gordon in "The Power of the Dog," for which he received an Academy Award nomination. On Oscar night, his "Elvis" director gave him a shout-out on Instagram, sharing a photo of the young star and writing, "Wishing him all the best for tonight with his extraordinary performance in Jane Campion's Power of the Dog!"
Despite his rising level of fame, Smit-McPhee told W that he doesn't get much attention from fans. "I think I could be giving off a little bit of a scary vibe," he admitted, "but I don't know what it is."
Steve Binder (Dacre Montgomery) produced a comeback
Dacre Montgomery stars in "Elvis" as Steve Binder, the producer and director behind the legendary 1968 television event "Elvis: The Comeback Special." Montgomery, like many of the stars of the film, is Australian, though he has made a play for mainstream Hollywood stardom over the past decade. The actor, who fans online note bears a resemblance to Zac Efron (per Popbuzz), starred in the big-screen "Power Rangers" film, playing the Red Ranger; he even acted opposite his "Elvis" co-star Olivia DeJonge in the Christmas-set horror movie "Better Watch Out." His biggest role to date, however, is his "Stranger Things" arc as Billy, the lifeguard and older brother of Max (Sadie Sink).
Montgomery was particularly happy with the character's villainous turn in Season 3 because it meant more stunt work. "I really enjoy doing all my own stunts," he told Vulture. "I'm at an age where I'm in good shape and not too much of a health risk for Netflix's insurance people. ... I grew up admiring stunt choreography, so I wanted to learn how it would be possible to do that."
Montgomery's work in "Elvis" impressed the film's director, Baz Luhrmann. The man behind "Moulin Rouge" has tweeted a number of updates on the project throughout its years-long development, and early in 2022, he shared, in part, "One of the great joys of working on @ElvisMovie was getting to work with actors that are new to me, like @dacremontgomery."
Luke Bracey stars as Jerry Schilling
Jerry Schilling met Elvis Presley when he was 12 and the other man was 19, according to an interview with Elvis Australia. They would go on to be lifelong friends, and Schilling would write a book about the King of Rock 'n' Roll. "We know what he did, his career and his movies, but who was the man behind the scenes?" Schilling said about his motivation for writing. "How did he feel about what he was doing?" These are questions that Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" tries to answer, and in this version of the story, Schilling is played by Luke Bracey.
Bracey had nothing but glowing things to say about his director in an interview with Collider. Though he couldn't discuss specifics of his experience at the time, he showered praise on Luhrmann's filmography, telling the outlet, "He's made some beautiful films and the visual aspect of his films are what's so striking about them. He really draws you in, as an audience. He's a terrific filmmaker."
Like many hunky Australians, the actor cut his teeth on an Aussie soap; he played Trey Palmer on 223 episodes of "Home and Away." International audiences are more likely to recognize him as Johnny Utah in the 2015 remake of "Point Break," taking over the role originally played by Keanu Reeves. He also played the romantic lead in Netflix romcom "Holidate," acting opposite Emma Roberts.
Richard Roxburgh reunited with Baz Luhrmann
When Baz Luhrmann needed an actor to play Vernon Presley, the father of Elvis, he called up someone he'd worked with before: Richard Roxburgh, who starred as The Duke in "Moulin Rouge!" While Roxburgh is a respected Aussie actor of stage and screen, he understands that Americans are likely to recognize him as the mustachioed villain from the Nicole Kidman-starring musical. "I've always looked at my relationship with Americans as an odd one in a way because of that," he told ComingSoon.net. "I suppose in Australia, I'm known for entirely different work. It's a weird thing that in the states it's mostly the Duke." On the other hand, some American fans may also recognize him for having played Dracula in the Hugh Jackman vehicle "Van Helsing," which critics overwhelmingly drove a stake through, so we suppose there are worse things to be known for than "Moulin Rouge!"
Though ComingSoon.net wrote that he seemed "chagrined" by how The Duke has defined his career for American audiences, Roxburgh has nothing but praise for his two-time director. "I regard him as a friend and I think he has a really brilliant and rare and unique take on the world that sometimes is going to flounder and sometimes is going to inspire and unseat and cause people's hats to fly off," he reflected.
Still, Roxburgh prefers acting onstage. "I will always go back to theatre, because it's my first and my great love," he told Man of Many.
Male model Alton Mason embodies Little Richard
Elvis Presley's life intersected with a number of other musicians whose careers were on the rise at the same time — and whose sound Elvis may have stolen from and taken credit for. One such artist was Little Richard, who released an album called "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" and once told Rolling Stone, "I really feel from the bottom of my heart that I am the inventor [of rock 'n' roll]. ... I think that Elvis was more acceptable being white back in that period. I believe that if Elvis had been black, he wouldn't have been as big as he was. If I was white, do you know how huge I'd be?"
In "Elvis," Little Richard is portrayed by Alton Mason, who was named 2019 Model of the Year by GQ Australia; they noted that Mason was the first Black male model to walk for Chanel. "I'm not trying to be the most handsome. I'm not trying to be the most influential," Mason said upon accepting the honor. "I'm just being and I'm free."
After "Elvis" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, the model-turned-actor shared a video on Instagram of himself posing on the red carpet. "A man that cannes do both," he quipped. In conversation with Vogue, he mentioned drawing inspo from Little Richard for a number of outfits, including at the Met Gala. "From the style to the makeup, I definitely incorporated his essences into the looks," he revealed.
Yola plays Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Godmother of Rock 'n' Roll
Sister Rosetta Tharpe is widely recognized as one of the inventors of the sound that made Elvis famous, picking up the nickname "The Godmother of Rock 'n' Roll" (per NPR). She was a guitarist who merged several styles of music, electrifying fans around the country, including Elvis himself. According to Gordon Stoker, who played music with both Tharpe and Elvis (via Rolling Stone), The King was impressed by her guitar-playing. "That's what really attracted Elvis: her pickin'," Stoker said. "He liked her singing, but he liked that pickin' first — because it was so different."
In Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" biopic, Tharpe is played by Grammy-nominated artist Yola, who has racked up six nominations, including a Best New Artist nod at the 2020 ceremony. She told Variety that she recognized the significance of playing such a trailblazing Black woman from history, explaining that her part as Tharpe is "so central and mainstream and in the purview of everyone, everyone knows about it. So the privilege I get to transmit this message, of rock and roll, and the diaspora's ownership of this genre, along with everything that it gave birth to, that gives me life."
She went on to give Luhrmann credit for wanting to address the lineage of Elvis' sound, restoring credit to the Black musicians who paved the way. "It wasn't just pulling people in and making a token gesture at it," she clarified. "It's profound within him."
Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup is played by a musician
One of Elvis Presley's defining features is how many of his songs were previously recorded by other artists, especially Black artists, who didn't reach the same fame as the hip-swiveling kid from Mississippi. Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup was one such artist; Elvis re-recorded his songs "That's All Right," "So Glad You're Mine," and "My Baby Left Me." According to WBSS Media, Crudup later retired, noting, "I realized I was making everybody rich, and here I was poor." Elvis, though, gave Crudup credit; he reportedly said, "If I had any ambition, it was to be as good as Arthur Crudup."
In "Elvis," Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup is played by Gary Clark Jr., himself an accomplished musician. The blues rocker has racked up four Grammys out of six nominations, including Best Contemporary Blues Album in 2020 for his album, "This Land." This isn't Clark's first acting gig, either! He had a small role in "Honeydripper," played a street musician in an episode of "NCIS: New Orleans," and appeared as himself in Jon Favreau's "Chef."
Clark is also a prolific contributor to soundtracks, including "Elvis." In 2017, he covered "Come Together" for Zack Snyder's "Justice League," and he told Variety that he was glad to do it. "When I found out that I wouldn't grow up to be Batman, I was a little bit disappointed," he said. "So to get to play a Beatles song in a movie with that, it's pretty cool."
Natasha Bassett starred on Lifetime
Elvis Presley's long list of romantic entanglements are the stuff of pop culture legend, including everyone from his longtime spouse Priscilla Presley to actress Cybill Shepherd and beyond. His first girlfriend, though, back before he was famous, was named Dixie Locke. In a book called "Blue Suede Shoes: The Culture of Elvis" (via Country Living), Locke recalled the opening days of her relationship with the man who would be King, remembering that they met at church. Their relationship, idyllic though it seems, was not to last. "We had talked about getting married, but by the time his records came out, we realized that wasn't going to happen," she said.
In "Elvis," Locke is played by Natasha Bassett, an Australian actor best known for her role as pop princess Britney Spears in the Lifetime Original Movie "Britney Ever After." She told Us Weekly that the accent was a big part of how she got into character, explaining, "The minute I found out I had the part, I started speaking in her accent right away. ... I was staying in accent for a full week before shooting, and I actually stayed in accent throughout the entire shoot." Bassett might also be recognizable to audiences as the lead in "The Pale Door," a horror Western from 2020.
Though "Elvis" will be her highest-profile project to date, Bassett also made headlines in 2022 for another reason: She's dating Elon Musk, according to the Daily Mail.
LOTR vet David Wenham plays Hank Snow
David Wenham had a tall order playing Hank Snow in "Elvis," because this meant the Australian actor would be playing a Canadian-American country singer. Snow mentored Elvis in the early days of his career, according to his obituary in The Washington Post, and although he hired Elvis as his opening act, Snow would play first so as not to deal with screaming girls too late into the night (per Wide Open Country).
Wenham, the man who plays him in the film, is perhaps most recognizable to international audiences from his roles as the eyepatch-wearing Dilios in "300" and its sequel and as Faramir in the latter two films of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. He told American Express Essentials that the fact that he would be playing Sean Bean's brother probably helped him land the latter part. "The physical similarity between myself and Sean Bean probably assisted. ... I've said before that we've both got big noses, it's our distinguishing feature!" he joked.
Wenham had a number of connections to the "Elvis" production before he joined the cast. He's worked with director Baz Luhrmann before, having appeared in the historical epic "Australia" as well as in drag as Audrey in "Moulin Rouge!" He also starred alongside his "Elvis" and "Moulin Rouge!" co-star Richard Roxburgh in "Van Helsing," a film in which he played a monk.
Kelvin Harrison Jr. plays a blues legend
The cast of "Elvis" includes a number of well-known musicians playing singers from history, but in the case of blues legend B.B. King, director Baz Luhrmann chose established actor Kelvin Harrison Jr. to take the part. While many musicians have spoken openly about Elvis' tendency to take sounds from Black artists and remake them for white audiences, B.B. King defended The King. According to Examiner.com, King said, "With Elvis, there was not a single drop of racism in that man. And when I say that, believe me I should know."
Harrison's profile has risen in the past several years thanks to his wise choice of roles in several critically acclaimed films. He played Luce in "Luce," starred in "Monsters and Men," and led the casts of "Jinn" and "Waves." In 2020, he played Fred Hampton in "The Trial of the Chicago 7," and he followed that performance up the following year by starring as Christian in "Cyrano." The latter film required Harrison to sing and dance to original songs by The National, and he told Collider that the process was very collaborative. "Being able to record with them and find different nuances in their songs, and find our own individual voices within the music was exciting," he explained.
Reflecting on his experience on the set of "Elvis" with Luhrmann, he told GOAT, "The man's imagination is endless. You never know what's going to happen; you just go, 'Whoo!'"
Xavier Samuel is Elvis' guitarist
Scotty Moore was Elvis Presley's guitarist for many years; he both toured with the rock legend and played on some of his most recognizable hits, including "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Hound Dog" (per Rolling Stone). Any Elvis biopic worth its salt would have to include the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and "Elvis" is no different — in Baz Luhrmann's glittery film, the role of Moore is played by Xavier Samuel.
Samuel is an Australian actor known for his role in "Adore," where he played Naomi Watts' hunky son, Ian, who has an affair with her best friend, played by Robin Wright. He played a man named Adam in a 2015 version of "Frankenstein" — stylized, exhaustingly, "Frank3n5t31n" — and he led the cast of the 2015 Jane Austen adaptation, "Love & Friendship," where his Reginald DeCourcy courted Kate Beckinsale.
Most famously, however, he played a vampire called Riley in "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse." In a conversation with Interview alongside his "Twilight" co-star Bryce Dallas Howard, the budding actor spoke about the discomfort that came with having legions of fans screaming for him thanks to the part. "It's kind of bizarre, isn't it? Having that kind of attention," he said. "I'm not under the microscope in the same fashion that a lot of the other cast members are, so I think I can slide under the radar a little bit more, but getting any attention at all is completely new for me."