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    The Best Actors to Play Elvis Onscreen

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    In honor of Austin Butler’s performance in the Baz Luhrmann biopic, we ranked 10 of the best — and worst — Presleys to grace the silver screen.Kurt Russell had the hip swivel down cold. Val Kilmer nailed the sincere, soulful voice. And Michael Shannon … well, the credits identified him as Elvis Presley, so that was the character he must have been playing in “Elvis & Nixon,” right?Since the King’s death in 1977, at 42, more than a dozen actors — and one space alien — have portrayed his walk, talk and famous charm in dozens of films and TV shows. Now one more has joined their ranks — Austin Butler, whose on-point hip gyrations are at the heart of Baz Luhrmann’s new “Elvis.”So how does Butler’s sultry, baby-faced King stack up against Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s Golden Globe-winning crooner or Harvey Keitel’s over-the-hill rocker? We offer our rankings. 1979Kurt Russell, ‘Elvis’ 🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸The perfectly coifed pouf, the raw, emotive voice, the frenzied hip thrusts, the gleaming, skintight rhinestone jumpsuit … blink, and you could easily believe, thanks to this near-flawless portrayal in a 1979 TV movie, that Kurt Russell is Elvis. Sure, Russell doesn’t actually sing — that was all the country artist Ronnie McDowell — but that speaking voice is spot-on. Buy it on Amazon.2005Jonathan Rhys Meyers, ‘Elvis: The Miniseries’ 🎸🎸🎸🎸The two-part show, which tackles Presley’s rise from high school in Mississippi to international superstardom, is a showcase for Rhys Meyers’s heart-pounding leg pumps (with memorable supporting turns from Randy Quaid as Col. Tom Parker, Presley’s manager, and Rose McGowan as the actress Ann-Margret, with whom Presley was rumored to have had an affair). Like Russell, Rhys Meyers doesn’t do his own singing, but he lip-syncs flawlessly to an even better option: the real thing. (This was the first biopic that the Presley estate allowed to use the master recordings.)Rent it on DVD.com.2005Tyler Hilton, ‘Walk the Line’ 🎸🎸🎸🎸Hilton pops up in four scenes of this Johnny Cash biopic as a young Elvis, opposite a young Joaquin Phoenix as Cash. It was one of Hilton’s first forays into acting — he considered himself more of a musician at the time — but he nails Presley’s slurred vocal style and the deeply felt conviction of his singing.Stream it on Tubi; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1993Val Kilmer, ‘True Romance’ 🎸🎸🎸🎸This romantic crime drama written by Quentin Tarantino centers not on the King, but on an Elvis fanatic (Christian Slater) and his new wife on the run from mobsters. But Kilmer’s apparition of Elvis, complete with gold lamé suit, might just be the most memorable part. (That’s saying something in a film that also featured Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson and a young Brad Pitt.) Kilmer’s appearance tops out at around two minutes and he’s credited only as “Mentor.” But the suave voice whispering murderous thoughts into Slater’s ear is unmistakably intended to be the King’s, and Kilmer aces it.Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1998Harvey Keitel, ‘Finding Graceland’ 🎸🎸🎸OK, so strictly speaking, Harvey Keitel is not Elvis but “Elvis,” a fictional older — and very much alive — version of Presley who faked his death in 1977 after becoming overwhelmed by the pressures of fame. Keitel nails the melted-chocolate quality of the rocker’s voice and delivers a full-throated portrayal of an over-the-hill King, complete with hip thrusts and shoulder shimmies. (The film was produced by Elvis’s ex-wife, Priscilla Presley, and scenes were actually filmed inside the Graceland mansion in Memphis.)Buy it on Amazon.2003Bruce Campbell, ‘Bubba Ho-Tep’ 🎸🎸🎸In this R-rated comedy-horror flick, Bruce Campbell is an aged Elvis impersonator in a nursing home, Ossie Davis is a fellow resident who claims to be President John F. Kennedy, they fight an Egyptian mummy sucking out residents’ souls through their butts, and, just trust us, it works. Campbell brings an endearingly crusty charisma to the part, and his self-deprecating hospital-bed monologues about growing old are surprisingly moving.Stream it on Tubi or Amazon Prime; rent or buy it on Apple TV or Vudu.1988David Keith, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ 🎸🎸🎸“Heartbreak Hotel” sounds, from the title, like an Elvis-adjacent chick flick, but it’s actually a comedy written and directed by Chris Columbus about a teenage boy who kidnaps Elvis as a present for his mother when she’s recovering from a car crash. (Elvis happens to be his mom’s favorite singer.) Critics — and the public — gave Keith’s portrayal a rather tepid reception, with Rita Kempley of The Washington Post concluding in her scalpelesque pan that “Playing Elvis is like playing a Kennedy, nearly impossible.” At least someone liked it: Keith’s King, who was fatherly, clean-cut and drug-free, did get the blessing of the Presley estate and Elvis’s national fan club.Buy it on Amazon.1981Don Johnson, ‘Elvis and the Beauty Queen’ 🎸🎸This made-for-TV movie focused on the end of Elvis’s life and his relationship with the beauty-pageant contestant Linda Thompson, whom he was romantically involved with after the end of his six-year marriage to Priscilla Presley. To judge by YouTube clips, Johnson rocked a jumpsuit as a zonked-out Elvis, yes, but his high-pitched speaking voice was better suited for a “Saturday Night Live” sketch than a seduction scene, and his bushy black wig was downright hokey — and that was before the heavy eyeliner and mascara.2016Michael Shannon, ‘Elvis & Nixon’🎸If you didn’t hear a security guard say, “It’s Elvis Presley!” you wouldn’t know Michael Shannon’s careworn, sullen Elvis was supposed to be the King. His craggy face is at odds with the King’s smooth features, and, combined with a voluminous black wig, his Elvis smacks of Michael Crawford in “Dance of the Vampires.” The film, a historical comedy, focused on a 1970 meeting between Presley and President Richard Nixon (played by Kevin Spacey, who also does not resemble his real-lie counterpart). Shannon is a great character actor, but he can’t overcome this confoundingly bad casting, despite the gleaming gold belt buckle, tinted glasses, high-collared shirt and flashing rings.Stream it on Amazon Prime; rent it on DVD.com.2002Bonus: Stitch in ‘Lilo & Stitch’He ain’t nothin’ but a hound alien. In this animated comedy, Experiment 626 — a.k.a. Stitch — uses a black wig, white jumpsuit and ukulele to indulge Lilo as she tries to teach him to be a model citizen. And honestly, based on the number of beachgoers who swooned when they got one of his flirtatious winks, we’d have to crown him the hip-swivel champion.Stream it on Disney+; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube. More

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      Val Kilmer Documentary Review: The Iceman Cometh

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      A documentary about Val Kilmer offers a self-portrait of the artist that’s personal but not quite intimate.The actor Val Kilmer is not only the subject of “Val,” a documentary directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott. He also receives a cinematography credit, having shot many of the home movies and video diary entries that give the film its visual texture. More a self-portrait than a profile, “Val” tells the story of a Hollywood career with a candor that stops short of revelation. The tone is personal but not quite intimate, producing in the viewer a warm, slightly wary feeling of companionship.Hanging out with Kilmer, now in his early 60s, is an interesting, bittersweet experience. In on-camera interviews, he still radiates movie-star charisma, even though his voice isn’t what it used to be. Since being treated for throat cancer in 2014, he speaks through a tracheostomy tube, and his words are spelled out in subtitles.What he says in his own raspy, electronically distorted voice is supplemented by narration — read by his son, Jack — that reflects on the ups and downs of a career that was never quite what he wanted it to be. Kilmer muses on the way acting crosses and blurs the boundary between reality and illusion, concluding that he’s spent most of his life “inside the illusion.”A Juilliard graduate with a passionate sense of craft, he ascended to Hollywood in the less-than-golden age of the 1980s. His best-known roles are probably still Iceman, the jaunty, square-jawed heavy in “Top Gun,” and Batman, whose suit he wore, not very comfortably, in between Michael Keaton and George Clooney. When Kilmer visits Comic-Con, the autograph seekers want him to sign memorabilia from those movies. But to appreciate the full range of his talent, you are better off cuing up “The Doors,” “Tombstone” and of course “Heat,” in which he credibly holds his own alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.In outline, “Val” is a standard biographical documentary, tracing an arc from childhood through struggle, triumph and more struggle. We see Kilmer with his parents and brothers, hear about his marriage to the British actress Joanne Whalley and witness on-set and backstage shenanigans with the likes of Sean Penn, Tom Cruise and Marlon Brando.Conflicts with directors and castmates, and Kilmer’s tabloid-fueled reputation for “difficulty,” are mentioned in passing, but “Val” is neither a first-person confessional nor a journalistic investigation. It seems to arise, above all, from the desire of a sometimes reluctant celebrity and frequently underestimated artist to be understood. With a combination of wit, sincerity, self-awareness, and the narcissism that is both a requirement and a pitfall of his profession, Kilmer succeeds in explaining himself, or at least convincing us that we never really knew him before.ValRated R. Rough language. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Cannes Film Festival: ‘Val,’ ‘The Velvet Underground’ and Famous Jerks

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      Two documentaries take different approaches to their star subjects. One, about the actor Val Kilmer, prefers to be hands-off. The other, about Lou Reed, welcomes complications.CANNES, France — As the documentary “Val” begins, a young, bare-chested Val Kilmer lounges on the set of “Top Gun” and claims that he’s nearly been fired from every movie he’s made. Then Kilmer’s lips twist in a smirk. He’s not playing for sympathy. He’s bragging.At the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, two documentaries debuted about famously prickly pop-cultural figures, but despite that promising first scene, “Val” would rather recontextualize the actor as a misunderstood softy. Perhaps you remember the stories about Kilmer, a major 1990s movie star whose career fizzled amid rumors that he was difficult to work with. Well, “Val,” directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, lets the 61-year-old actor retell those tales more sympathetically, in his own voice.Or, to be more precise, the voice of his son Jack, who delivers the documentary’s first-person narration. Throat cancer has ravaged Val Kilmer’s signature purr, and Jack Kilmer, an actor, is an acceptable voice substitute who nevertheless sounds far more easygoing than his father ever did. Kilmer has been recording himself since childhood, and over decades of home movies, he and his son paint the picture of an undervalued artist who always wanted to give his all, even when Hollywood wasn’t interested.Jack’s narration is so good-natured that it may take you a little while to realize that Kilmer dislikes nearly every film on his résumé that a fan might want to hear about. “Top Secret,” his first film, was “fluff” that Kilmer says he was embarrassed to appear in, and he practically had to be strong-armed into making the jingoistic Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun.” On “Batman Forever,” Kilmer claims the studio machine thwarted his attempts to deliver an actual performance, so he instead patterned his Bruce Wayne on soap-opera actors.All the while, Kilmer was recording elaborate audition tapes for the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, efforts that “Val” devotes nearly as much screen time to as the roles he actually booked. Here’s the funny thing, though: Kilmer was a much better actor in the movies he hated! In the clips of “Top Gun,” you see Kilmer at his most loose and playful because he isn’t taking anything about the movie seriously, but when we watch his “Full Metal Jacket” audition — or when he practices lines from “Hamlet,” a dream role he never got to play — Kilmer’s charisma calcifies, and he becomes far too preening and pretentious.Much of the footage in “Val,” directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, was shot by Kilmer over the years.Amazon StudiosSo was he as big a jerk as had been rumored? “Val” sidesteps the story about his stubbing his cigarette out on a cameraman or the “Batman Forever” director Joel Schumacher’s claim that the actor was “psychotic”; here, Kilmer simply says he quit playing Batman because the suit was too arduous. In a segment about the notorious 1996 flop “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” Kilmer portrays himself as the troubled production’s serene moral compass; you’d never know that a fed-up Brando threw Kilmer’s cellphone in the bushes and reportedly said, “Young man, don’t confuse your ego with the size of your salary.”Much is made, too, of Kilmer’s romance and marriage to the actress Joanne Whalley, though we hardly hear her speak in all of Kilmer’s home-video footage. After they divorce and he fights for more time with their children, the film lets his noble, aggrieved phone calls to Whalley play out nearly in full. I’d expect that unchallenged point-of-view from a celebrity memoir. I’m not sure I buy it in a documentary.By contrast, the new Todd Haynes documentary “The Velvet Underground,” which also debuted at Cannes on Wednesday, is all too happy to confirm every story you’ve ever heard about the singer-songwriter Lou Reed being a self-obsessed jerk. Like Kilmer, Reed claimed that anyone who beefed with him was simply interfering with his artistic process, but unlike “Val,” this film isn’t afraid to show how badly Reed wanted to be famous, and how much he resented collaborators who could wrest the spotlight from him.Todd Haynes’s documentary examines Lou Reed (center, with a reclining Andy Warhol in sunglasses), and his band, the Velvet Underground. Apple TV+Reed died in 2013, and other important figures in the film like Andy Warhol (credited with steering the early career of Reed’s band, the Velvet Underground) and the singer Nico have long since passed. Haynes isn’t interested in incorporating a lot of archival clips to bring those lost voices to life; instead, this artsy documentary lets the living members of the band, like the instrumentalist John Cale and drummer Moe Tucker, do more of the heavy lifting.“The Velvet Underground” is no conventional music documentary: For one, it uses hardly any performance footage, though some of the band’s most iconic songs, like “Candy Says” and “I’m Waiting for the Man,” play often in the background. Haynes is more invested in conjuring a vibe, placing the viewer smack in the middle of the mid-60s milieu that produced seminal figures like Reed and Warhol.And though Haynes is clearly a fan of his subject, he isn’t afraid to complicate that vibe, either. One of the film’s most welcome talking heads is the critic Amy Taubin, who recalls what was so beguiling about Warhol and Reed’s artistic scene, then adds a spiky observation: If you weren’t pretty enough, Taubin claims, all those men eventually lost interest in you.Let’s face it, famous people are narcissists: If you’re going to will yourself into fame and then stay there, it’s practically required. Haynes explores that concept in a way “Val” can’t quite bring itself to do. Even if “The Velvet Underground” is less of a comprehensive documentary and more of a perfume that lingers for a while, evoking a time and place, at least it’s not afraid to add a few sour notes in pursuit of a more full-bodied scent. More

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      ‘The Birthday Cake’ Review: Baked Hoods

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      This mob drama folds family secrets and fading power into a story of operatic vengeance.“With tragedy comes strength,” a priest (Ewan McGregor) tells Gio (Shiloh Fernandez) early in “The Birthday Cake,” so we can anticipate trouble. But it’s not the fairly predictable tonal arc that makes this first feature from Jimmy Giannopoulos click: It’s the deftness with which he weaves multiple threads of unease into a single strand of throttling tension.As we learn in flashback, Gio has so far resisted his family’s efforts to toughen him up. Now, on the 10th anniversary of his father’s death, his mettle will be tested as he crosses his Brooklyn neighborhood to a memorial hosted by Angelo (Val Kilmer), a mob boss and one of Gio’s many uncles (mostly played by familiar screen wiseguys like Paul Sorvino and Vincent Pastore). A drive-by shooting has claimed Angelo’s voice and his family’s primacy, but Gio’s immediate concern is the safety of the chocolate cake he’s carrying, carefully baked by his mother (Lorraine Bracco).Updating the Mafia drama, Giannopoulos (who wrote the screenplay with Fernandez and Diomedes Raul Bermudez) folds family secrets and fading power into a story of operatic vengeance. Warnings and threats — from rival thugs, acquaintances and the F.B.I. — follow Gio from bakery to bodega, turning his journey into a gantlet of anxiety and distrust. Friends hint darkly of looming conflicts, and a terrifying scene at a cousin’s apartment (featuring a menacing William Fichtner) leaves Gio shaken.Unfolding mainly over one long night, “The Birthday Cake,” punchily photographed by Sean Price Williams, is brash, a little hokey and endearingly melodramatic. Giannopoulos might be inexperienced, but he’s canny with mood and unafraid to experiment with the rhythms of violence. I, for one, am keen to see what he does next.The Birthday CakeRated R. No worse than any season of “The Sopranos” that includes the Bada Bing. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More