Austin Butler Could Barely Walk For Nearly A Year Due To A Dune 2 Press Tour Injury

Austin Butler played the role of Feyd-Rautha, the vicious, unthinking nephew of the depraved Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) in Denis Villeneuve's 2024 film "Dune: Part 2." Villeneuve's "Dune" movies have caused quite a stir, managing to translate Frank Herbert's incredibly oblique sci-fi epics into mainstream Hollywood hits. "Dune Part 2" not only made over $714 million at the box office, but was heaped with accolades. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Cinematography. It won for its Visual Effects. Feyd-Rautha was presented as one of the film's central villains, a bloodthirsty fighter more keen to kill than to rule. He was, as Herbert wrote him, a dark mirror for the film's hero, the young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet). "Dune: Part Two" (our review here) climaxed in a knife fight between Feyd and Paul. 

Austin Butler was an odd choice for the role, as he had just broken out playing Elvis in "Elvis" the year before. Butler is devastatingly handsome, disarming, and one might presume he'd play better romantic leads than monstrous killers. He availed himself well, however, proving that he was wholly devoted to the role and to his craft. 

Although during the film's extensive press tour, Butler may have been a little too devoted. At some point — and he doesn't quite remember where — Butler stepped on a piece of glass in a hotel room while waiting to conduct an interview with the press. The glass was painful, but not so painful that Butler thought it was anything other than a bruise or a little sore spot. Butler spoke to People Magazine recently (promoting his recent crime film "Caught Stealing") and he revealed that he had a piece of glass lodged in his foot for eight months.

From the time Butler was doing press for "Dune," all the way up through the shooting of "Caught Stealing," the actor had that glass in his foot. "Caught Stealing" required the actor to do a lot of running, and the glass in his foot was getting increasingly agitated. It seems that a combination of obliviousness and perhaps some misplaced machismo prevented Butler from really looking closely at his injury. He's not proud of it, as he said: 

"That feels dumb when I look back at it. [...] When I was on the 'Dune' press tour, I was in Korea doing all these interviews, and I was in a hotel room and I was walking barefoot. I must've stepped on a piece of glass. [...] But for whatever reason, I thought that it was a nerve thing in my foot. So I just was hobbling around for eight months. And then right before we were starting to film ['Caught Stealing'], I was just pushing through the pain of running."

Butler says he did consult an expert, but immediately confessed that the "expert" he consulted was some guy who worked at a New York bodega. They both agreed that the pain was "just a nerve thing," and Butler continued to walk on his glass-stabbed foot for a little while longer. Eventually, Butler did finally go to see a real doctor. The actor said that his doctor finally cut the piece of glass out of his foot, and lo, he was able to run again. One might wonder if he kept the offending shard in question.

Butler's foot, at last check, has fully healed, and he seems to be able to run without any further issues. Had he the wherewithal, he might have had the glass removed from his foot the same day it went in.