Austin Butler Has a Surprising Link to That Cameo in the ‘Caught Stealing’ Mid-Credits

Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Caught Stealing’Caught Stealing, the new black comedy-crime film starring Austin Butler, might seem like a stark outlier in Darren Aronofsky‘s filmography, but he proved he could stay in this lane for the foreseeable future. The 1998-set crime thriller, based on screenwriter Charlie Huston‘s novel, feels heavily inspired by Martin Scorsese‘s After Hours and a handful of Quentin Tarantino films from the ’90s and the wave of movies with foul-mouthed gangsters and crimes gone wrong. Despite being a pastiche, Caught Stealing is a rip-roaring piece of entertainment that still features Aronofsky’s sobering ruminations on death, trauma, and guilt.

While not the kind of film that merits a post-credit scene, viewers ought to stay in their seats during the initial credits sequence in Caught Stealing, as it finally reveals the face of a character we heard so much about throughout the runtime. Having Laura Dern appear as Butler’s mother is not only an unexpected jolt of energy but also reflects their tight-knit personal and professional relationship.

Who Is Revealed To Be Hank’s Mother in ‘Caught Stealing’?

Austin Butler as Hank, leaning against a dumpster next to Bud the cat in Caught Stealing.

Austin Butler plays Hank Thompson, a once-promising baseball star whose career was derailed by a car accident that permanently damaged his knee and killed his friend and passenger, Dale. Hailing from San Francisco, Hank now lives in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, as a bartender, but he always finds time to call his mother on the opposite side of the country to check in and, most importantly, discuss the latest San Francisco Giants game. Hank signs off every phone call with “Go Giants!” no matter the circumstances.

We never see Hank’s mother, and her voice is only faintly heard on screen, but she remains a vital spiritual figure in Hank’s life and the overall narrative. Amid the chaos of the criminal conspiracy he’s been entangled with, his mother is his one source of stability and peace, a source of comfort after re-living the trauma of the crash and the murder of his girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz). On the pier, she talks to her son at his lowest point and encourages him to set things right, even as her life is threatened by the corrupt police detective, Elise Roman (Regina King).

During the middle of the stylized end credits, after Hank flees to Mexico and mails the cash owed to the Russian mob to his mother, we see someone opening up the package full of money. As the credits roll, we see Laura Dern, revealed to be the actor behind Hank’s mother, in a state of complete disbelief at the amount of money she’s been rewarded. Most post-credit sequences set up future installments (totally possible considering that the source material belongs to a book series), but this cameo is merely a fun note to end on an already wholly enjoyable crime caper.

Laura Dern’s Personal Connection to Austin Butler

However, there is a deeper meaning behind Dern’s cameo in Caught Stealing. Having a strong maternal presence in the film was uber-personal to Austin Butler, as he lost his own mother to cancer in 2014. Speaking to Men’s Health, the Oscar-nominated Elvis actor has been tapped as one of the signature leading men of his generation. To avoid the perils of fandom, he looked to guidance from mentors, with one of his most influential voices being Laura Dern. Upon meeting the Oscar-winner for Marriage Story, he said they connected “on a soul level,” claiming they “felt like kindred spirits.” Their bond was especially serendipitous, as throughout her life, Butler’s mom was often cited as a Dern lookalike.

Following in the footsteps of many of the great American actors, Austin Butler, as outlined in the Men’s Health story, pushed his body and transformed into roles, from Elvis Presley to Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Dune: Part 2, to the detriment of his long-term well-being. While he did try to resemble the physique of a former baseball player in Caught Stealing, he learned that he didn’t need to destroy his life to play these demanding parts, a lesson imparted to him by Dern. “She’s helping me more and more to see that you can come out the other side, and maybe bits of you have healed, and synthesized, and metabolized,” Butler said, who recalled his body shutting down during Elvis and experiencing blindness during The Bikeriders.

Film culture has grown to be skeptical of method acting and its innate self-indulgence, and if Butler were to keep needlessly punishing himself to give a solid performance, we’d get tired of his persona. However, Caught Stealing, featuring an effortlessly charming movie star performance at the center, is representative of a star letting loose, dropping the pretentiousness of transformation and just relying on his sheer presence, an ineffable quality that only the select few possess. Laura Dern not only proved to be an influential mentor and friend, but, in a stroke of miracle work, she may also have ceased Butler’s future inclinations for method acting. If Butler can deliver a charismatic, funny, and emotionally transfixing performance for a major director every year, we’re in good hands.