Austin Butler on Caught Stealing: ‘It felt more raw than Elvis or Dune – like I didn’t have this other skin’

‘Austin’s a really good picker of projects. I’ve talked to him about it, and seen how he does it. He’s doing it the right way. He’s thinking hard’ - (Invision/AP)

In the summer of 1998, the filmmaker Darren Aronofsky could be found spray painting stencils of the pi symbol all over his native Manhattan – a bit of guerrilla marketing for his feature debut, π (or Pi). Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, little Austin Butler was a creative seven-year-old with an allergy to people. He’d play GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 when he wasn’t being shoehorned into after-school softball tournaments by his parents. “I’d come home crying,” Butler grins. “I didn’t want to be around other kids.”

Today, the 34-year-old is one of Young Hollywood’s most in-demand actors, a pouty Brando disciple with an Oscar nomination for Elvis. Aronofsky, 56, is the man responsible for divisive shockers such as Mother!, The Whale and Black Swan; a director from the more-is-more school of cinematic button-pushing. The pair have collided for Caught Stealing, a brisk new thriller set in the summer of 1998 and, in many ways, inspired by that era’s filmmaking maxim: toss together some chugging action, real-world location shooting and a handful of beautiful stars and voila! Instant movie-dom.