The Careful Crafting of Austin Butler

There’s a scene early on in the new film “The Bikeriders” that functions like a stress test for stardom.

While drinking at a 1960s pool hall, a woman named Kathy (Jodie Comer) is unnerved by the menacing bikers in the room and grabs her purse to go. She’s only stopped dead in her tracks when she catches sight of Benny, another biker, alone. The young man’s muscles are rippling, his hair artfully mussed, his gaze troubled but beguiling. As Kathy stares at him from across the crowded room, the jukebox music and biker chatter fade away, and all you can hear is her stunned gasp as she realizes she’s fallen in love.

No visual effects are required for this scene, just a man who can hold the screen and make a woman hold her breath. It’s the sort of role you might have filled in past decades with the likes of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman or Brad Pitt. But who from today’s cohort of young stars has their presence?

That’s what worried the director Jeff Nichols two years ago as he embarked on casting the character. He had written Benny as someone who feels mythic even to his fellow bikers, but no contemporary actor was even close to coming to mind. So Nichols wasn’t expecting much when he met with Austin Butler, whose breakthrough film “Elvis” was, at that point, still months from release.

What he found, even as Butler walked up, was someone who looked and felt exactly like the character he had written, someone with beauty, gravitas and easy masculinity.

Or, as Nichols put it, “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m talking to a movie star.’”