Why Austin Butler can't stop playing portraits of mid-century masculinity

Austin Butler has an affinity for a certain kind of man.

Because he's the actor behind them, they're, of course, tall and handsome. But they're also generally stoic pillars of midcentury masculinity, who lived the bulk of their adult lives sometime between 1940 and 1970, and in some way must grapple with traditional representations of their gender.

He's played takes on this character in Elvis and in the yet-to-be-released The Bikeriders (not to mention his stint as member of the Manson family, Tex Watson, in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood). Now, he doubles down on that tendency with the role of pilot Major Gale 'Buck' Clevens in Apple TV+'s World War II drama Masters of the Air, the latest WWII miniseries from the producing team of Steven Spielberg, Gary Goetzman, and Tom Hanks.

Butler tells EW he hasn't purposely been choosing projects solely in this era, but that they just keep coming to him. "For whatever reason, I ended up playing in this space for a while," he says. "But there's something that resonates with me. A lot of my favorite films take place around that time period. The actors that I look at a lot, who impacted me from a young age — like Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Montgomery Clift, and Marlon Brando — are from that era. That whole time period has impacted me a lot."

The movie star shares a key quality with those bastions of midcentury acting excellence — an uncanny ability to craft a preternatural stillness that is vividly alive. "I tend to be still a lot of the time in my life and feel very sensitive to what's going on around me," Butler reflects on this trend in his performances. "But I also have moments where, if I'm around the right people, I can be very outgoing and have a lot of energy. There are times where I can be very fired up about something. But with the still characters, what I always have loved in other people's performances is when you are able to somehow channel that in a way where it's not coming out as physically at times. It's coming out through your eyes and then finding the moments where you let it erupt and let it rip."

Masters of the Air, which hits Apple TV+ with its first two episodes on Jan. 26, follows the 100th Bomb Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces, also known as the “Bloody Hundredth.” It's the Air Force companion piece to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, and it finds Butler thrust into the heat of war as a bomber pilot.

Though the cast didn't spend any time in the air, they did log many hours in flight simulators. "We had professional pilots there who were teaching us exactly how everything works," Butler notes. "At that time, I felt confident that I could take off and land an airplane, but there's a lot more to it than being in a flight simulator. I definitely would love to be able to do that myself."

For now, audiences can watch Butler take to the skies on television.

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• In Masters of the Air, Austin Butler and Callum Turner turn their eyes to the skies of World War II
• Austin Butler is finally 'getting rid' of his Elvis accent: 'I have probably damaged by vocal cords'
• Austin Butler recalls 'getting hit in the eyes with rocks' while filming The Bikeriders: 'It was visceral'