Austin Butler says spending time with his “hero” Robert De Niro made him opt not to get high with famous cannabis connoisseur Snoop Dogg.
During a stop on Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlier this week, the Elvis actor was asked for the story behind photos of him and the Oscar winner hanging out at the rapper’s Malibu home in March.
“That was wild,” he said of the Instagram snapshot posted by Snoop’s son Cordell Broadus.
“A mutual friend said, ‘Do you want to come ... have tacos with Snoop Dogg and Robert De Niro?’ and I dropped everything, and I was there in a heartbeat.”
Host Jimmy Kimmel had to ask Austin if Snoop, a seasoned pot smoker, “offered” him “anything” to toke on during the get-together.
“He had it there,” the actor admitted. “I was so nervous to get too high and try to talk to my hero Robert De Niro, so I refrained.”
Austin has long talked about his admiration for De Niro.
In a piece for A.frame, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’s digital magazine, last year, he called Raging Bull one of the films that shaped his entire approach to acting.
“The dedication that he had to that part is so endlessly inspiring to me,” he wrote.
“The freedom that I see when I watch him, the subtlety that he can have, and then, moments of explosion. ... I cannot take my eyes off of him.”
Austin will next be seen alongside Tom Hardy and Jodie Comer in the biker movie The Bikeriders.
