Ok, I found this quite by chance, as it's not in the documentation at present...
There is a getOriginal() method available which returns an array of the original attribute values:
User::updating(function($user)
{
if ($user->username != $user->getOriginal('username')) {
doSomething();
}
// If you need multiple attributes you may use:
// $originalAttributes = $user->getOriginal();
// $originalUsername = $originalAttributes['username'];
});
Be careful, prior to Laravel 7 getOriginal ignores attribute type casting.