The actor also made a rare public appearance with his current girlfriend, Kaia Gerber.
Vanessa Hudgens and Austin Butler had an Oscars night run-in. The exes, who dated for more than eight years before their 2020 split, crossed paths after the 2023 Academy Awards.
Cameras caught the Elvis star, who lost the Best Actor Oscar to The Whale's Brendan Fraser, leaving Vanity Fair's post-ceremony party alongside Sharon Stone. As the pair exited the bash waving to onlookers, Hudgens, who hosted ABC's pre-Oscars telecast, walked right past her ex.
The exes didn't make eye contact or speak during the brief run-in, but video from the moment shows Hudgens clocking Butler as she looks up from her phone, and the actor realizing that Hudgens just walked by shortly thereafter.
Hudgens and Butler have both moved on romantically since their split, as she's engaged to baseball player Cole Tucker, and he's dating model Kaia Gerber. Before his run-in with Hudgens, Butler made a rare appearance with Gerber as they entered the Vanity Fair party.
The couple looked happy as can be as they posed for pics, with Gerber stunning in a sparkling Celine gown and Butler looking dapper in a Saint Laurent tuxedo jacket and silk shirt.
Before Butler's relationship with Gerber, back when he was dating Hudgens, his then-girlfriend played a big role in his impressive Elvis transformation. That fact was something Hudgens first revealed during an appearance on Live With Kelly and Ryan in August 2019, shortly after Butler's casting in Elvis was announced.
"It's so crazy, because last December, we were driving along and we were listening to Christmas music, and then an Elvis Presley Christmas song came on," she told Ryan Seacrest at the time. "He had just dyed his hair dark -- he's a natural blonde -- and I was looking at him and he was singing along and I was like, 'Babe, you need to play Elvis. I don't know how, but I'm serious. You need to play him.'"
She mentioned the idea again the next month, when she came upon Butler singing and playing the piano.
"I'm like, 'I don't know how, but we need to figure out how you can play Elvis. I don't know how we get rights or what we do, but you need to play him. It is your calling,'" she said. "And then that next month we get a call saying Baz Luhrmann is doing the Elvis biopic and I was like, 'Babe, this is it.'"
Butler, who's already won a Golden Globe for his Elvis performance, told the same story years later, during The Hollywood Reporter's Actors Roundtable, though he didn't mention Vanessa by name.
"I was looking at Christmas lights and there was an Elvis Christmas song on the radio. I was with a friend of mine and I was singing along and my friend kind of looked over at me and goes, 'You've got to play Elvis.' I said, 'That's such a long shot,'" he recalled. "... And then a couple of weeks later I was playing the piano. I never really sang for any of my friends or anything. That same friend was there. I was playing the piano. She said, 'I'm serious. You've got to figure out how you can get the rights to a script and write something and do Elvis' life.'"
He finally name dropped Hudgens in January 2023, telling the Los Angeles Times, "We’d been together for so long and she had this sort of clairvoyant moment, and so I really, I owe her a lot for believing in me."
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