He was ‘free’ to play an ugly character in Dune 2

Man of the moment Austin Butler regularly tops the charts in highly regarded “Sexiest Man Alive” polls. But in his latest role in Dune: Part 2, Butler plays a Voldemort-esque villain with black teeth, a bald head and a penchant for putting women down.

We caught up with him at the film’s London premiere to find out what it was like going from heartthrob to Harkonnen. “It was liberating,” he said, “because you’re not trying to be anything else.” The best part about it, obviously, was the bald cap. “It was great not having hair. Especially after Elvis, where hair was everything”.

Butler wore six different wigs to emulate the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s raven quiff for the Elvis biopic, and the film’s director, Baz Luhrmann, was a tiresome taskmaster. He was obsessed with hair, Butler said, “to the point where he would fix every strand between takes.” Luhrmann had a famous line on set, “The hair has spoken, so we can roll the camera.”

That’s not to say Butler didn’t spend hours in hair and makeup to transform into her character Feyd-Rautha Harkonen in Dune 2. Yet some of her beauty secrets are surprisingly similar. The trick to getting those teeth? “They put black inside the Invisalign,” Butler said. It takes a bit of a bite out of his character’s tail when you find out he’s wearing a retainer.

The stars of Dune put on a glamorous performance for the premiere, before jetting off to an afterparty at the Old Sessions House in Clerkenwell. London saw co-stars Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet tear up the dance floor late into the night with Naughties anthems.