Austin Butler Pays Tribute To Lisa Marie Presley After BAFTA Win

BAFTA/Elvia Presley/YouTube

Austin Butler continues to add to his trophy collection for his role in the film Elvis. The actor took home the Best Actor BAFTA on Sunday evening, and took time to honor Elvis’s late daughter, Lisa Marie, during a post-win interview with media.

“It’s been a really unimaginably tragic time, you know, and grief is a long process,” Butler told the press, Variety reports. “And so my heart and my love was with [the Presley family] always. I feel honoured to have been welcomed into the family. It’s a bittersweet time.”

Butler added that he feels lucky to have been able to portray the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll on the big screen.

“The feeling of standing on an international stage and looking out and looking down at the jumpsuit that I was wearing and realizing there were certain moments where I was seeing the closest thing to what Elvis would have seen during his ’68 Special or whatever that was and I miss it a lot. I miss that experience,” the 31-year-old actor said.

Lisa Marie Presley, the only daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, died January 12, 2023, of apparent cardiac arrest. She was 54.

Lisa Marie’s last public appearance was at the Golden Globe Awards two days prior to her death. She appeared alongside her mother and the rest of the Elvis cast and crew where they celebrated the success of the film and saw Austin Butler take home the trophy for Best Actor in a Drama Motion Picture.

 

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Following Lisa Marie’s death, Butler has spoken numerous times about the incredible bond he shared with her. During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the actor shared that he felt an immediate connection to Lisa Marie the first time they met.

“I first met Lisa when we screened the film at Graceland, and I’ve never had an experience where I met somebody and felt an immediate depth of relationship to them. And she was a person who didn’t really have anything to prove and wouldn’t open up to everybody, and she just opened up to me. And we got so close so fast. So, it’s just devastating,” he said.

Watch Austin Butler share his memories of Lisa Marie Presley on The Tonight Show in the video below.