Did you know Austin Butler originally got his start as a background actor for Nickelodeon and Disney Channel shows?! Yep, that’s right, the actor played love interests on shows like iCarly and Hannah Montana before he became an Oscar-nominated actor for his role in 2022’s Elvis.

The Dune 2 star originally got his start on Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide in 2005, until starring as Derek Hansen in Hannah Montana. He would then star as Jake in the iCarly episode called iLike Jake and from there, an he briefly starred on Wizards of Waverly Place, Jonas and Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure.

“I started acting when I was about 13 years old. I stumbled into doing extra work, so that got me onto sets in a very low-pressure way,” Austin told Interview Magazine in October 2019.

“Prior to that, I had been a very, very shy child. Being on a set with other children, there wasn’t this hierarchy, which there can be sometimes,” he continued. “That really taught me a lot about how I want to conduct myself in any environment. I started going to acting class and learning that there was a craft to it, and then I fell in love with it. Then it was a slow process of going through hundreds of auditions, and you only book one thing. I remember the days of being so grateful to just book one line on a TV show.”

On top of that, he and Selena Gomez, a.k.a. the queen of Disney Channel, are still friends after they starred in Wizards of Waverly Place together in 2009!

“When I was filming Elvis, Selena found this photograph of the two of us when I did a guest-star thing on her show Wizards of Waverly Place,” he told Vanity Fair in their Hollywood 2023 issue. “And she sends it to me, just going, ‘Wow, remember this?’ It feels like another life.”

Austin went on to talk about how fortunate he and Selena are in their careers now, expressing gratitude. “When you’re a child actor, you see so many people come in from Texas or something, and at a certain point they may quit or go back, he said.” We’re just so fortunate to have careers in this industry for this amount of time.”

Scroll through the gallery below to see every time Austin spoke about his childhood acting days.

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