Julia Butters on ‘The Fabelmans,’ Stealing Scenes From DiCaprio and Meeting Anne Spielberg
Although she’s just 13 years old, actor Julia Butters Quentin Tarantino, Michael Bay and the Russo Brothers have all been his clients. Steven Spielberg. Her breakthrough came in Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” in which she stole scenes as Trudi, a pint-sized thespian whose commitment to her craft shocks Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton out of paycheck complacency. In Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans,” she again plays an actor, though this time a decided amateur: Reggie, protagonist Sammy’s younger sister whom he enlists to star in his adolescent filmmaking endeavors. Butters claims her approach to acting is somewhere in between these two characters.
“I’m a mixture of a bunch of different techniques,” she says. “Part of me is very serious and devoted. And part of me is there to make friends, and super excited to just be there.”
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Calling “The Fabelmans” “one of the most emotional movies I’ve made,” Butters says she was thrilled just to receive sides from Spielberg’s longtime production shingle, Amblin. She was encouraged by Reggie’s response to her audition when she was offered the role. “He said, ‘I think you did pretty well representing her without even knowing who she was.’” Nevertheless, she admits to feeling pressure — if self-imposed — to get her portrayal right of the sister of an acclaimed director.
“It was definitely a challenge to not only be on a Steven Spielberg set and not geek out the entire time,” she says, “but also immortalizing his sister and bringing an essence of [Spielberg’s sister Anne] to the character.”
Butters said that Anne was more than the fictionalized portrait Spielberg and Tony Kushner had painted when she met her in person.
“She came to set for a big family scene and she just hugged me for almost a minute straight,” Butters remembers. “She’s such an elegant woman. I’m so incredibly grateful that I got to represent her.”
Given Spielberg’s pedigree with coaxing great performances from young actors, going as far back as Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore in “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” it’s no surprise that she says he not only made her feel comfortable on set, but also empowered her. “If he likes it, he’ll come out clapping and laughing, and it just makes you feel so amazing about yourself,” Butters says. “[He] was like that legendary uncle that you’ve never met, but you think is so cool — and then you meet them, and
they’re amazing.”
After recently completing filming on “Queen of Bones,” in which she stars opposite fellow acting prodigy Jacob Tremblay (“Room”), Butters says she’s been doing a lot of writing, and would love to direct or write a project in the future. Otherwise, she hopes to work with “a female director,” or Martin Scorsese (“he would be super fun to learn from,” she says), but her current plans include “a little bit of time for myself to figure out what I what I really want in this life.”
Describe her “Fabelmans” work in the context of the challenges she’s faced thus far, Butters once again invokes the ambitions of her earlier character, Trudi. “Being able to represent somebody in the in the real world and bring them to the screen to live forever, I’ve always wanted to do that,” she says. “That’s the closest I’ve gotten to a biopic so far, and that’s definitely very high on my list.” She further credits this and Tarantino’s film for preparing her for the challenges, and responsibilities, of building a career
for herself.
“Hearing and experiencing such serious acting at such a young age really helped with how I view it and how much I take it seriously.”
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