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" The Spectacular Now is a big acting leap for 26-year-old Miles Teller \u2014 away from the 2011 Footloose remake (he played Willard) and raunchy comedies. He and his co-star Shailene Woodley (of The Descendants) both took the top acting honors at Sundance for the film, which easily ranks with the likes of the 1989 classic Say Anything as one of the best American movies made about the teenage experience. In the film (which opens today in a limited release that will expand throughout the month), he plays Sutter, the king of a small-town Georgia high school with the charm of Ferris Bueller and the world seemingly on a string \u2014 except that he is slipping secretly, slowly, inexorably into alcoholism. But when he falls for the school&amp;#039;s reclusive nerd Aimee Finicky (played by Woodley), they both begin to face up to some harsh truths. It&amp;#039;s a powerful, beautifully acted tale built upon a rich script by the writing duo from (500) Days of Summer. With a few more comedies awaiting release and a just-completed role playing the villain to Woodley&amp;#039;s heroic lead in the upcoming Hunger Games-style epic Divergent, Teller called from what was supposed to be a vacation in Ibiza. Things, however, weren&amp;#039;t going as planned. ESQUIRE.COM: I heard you&amp;#039;re calling from Ibiza. MILES TELLER: I was supposed to be in Ibiza, but my buddy lost his passport the day of the trip, so about an hour or two before I was supposed to be flying out I had to cancel. Now I&amp;#039;m vacationing in Valley Village [a non-descript section of LA] because my car broke down and I had to take it to a mechanic. ESQ: Well aside from that, you&amp;#039;re having a pretty spectacular now yourself, and what seems to have started it all was co-starring in the remake of Footloose. How&amp;#039;d that come about? Did you feel intimidated taking on a role that had been so iconic to its fans? MT: When Footloose came around initially, I was very excited because in high school my first play was Footloose. I played the part of Willard in the musical play, too. I love musicals and Footloose was very near and dear to me. The director was auditioning for the part of Ren, the lead, but the director saw my tape and thought while I&amp;#039;d make a pretty good Ren, I&amp;#039;m make the perfect Willard. I was the only one they read for Willard and Kenny Wormald was one of the only two who read with me. Me and Kenny hit it off because he&amp;#039;s from Boston and I spent a lot of time in the Northeast. But I&amp;#039;ve never seen the original movie. I grabbed the story all from that script. In the script Willard has things with his mom that are not in the movie. I knew Chris Penn was a great actor, one of the best of his generation, but I was just eager to get back in cowboy boots and overalls because I loved that role. ESQ: You did Project X and 21 And Over, which were both pretty wild. At any point did you draw the line or ask, &amp;quot;What am I doing?&amp;quot; MT: It&amp;#039;s funny, &amp;#039;cause with Spectacular Now I had one journalist ask me if I was worried about being typecast as the party guy. But Spectacular Now is a drama, 21 and Over is about friendship and Project X is just insane! For X, I didn&amp;#039;t have many official days on set, but I liked to go to a bar and then head over to the set because it felt like a legitimate party was always going on. They&amp;#039;d shoot from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. In 21, I was a little nervous about the tube sock scene [in which he and a costar had to walk across a college campus while wearing only tube socks on their manhood]. We went to rehearsals. They pointed us into a dressing room and said put on your costume, and then we found out they wanted us to just wear a tube sock. It&amp;#039;s funny, when they ask you to put on wardrobe and all there is a sock and a robe, it felt like what a porn star must feel like. You take the robe off, you feel so free. School was still going on at the University of Washington where we were shooting, so probably there were 200, 300 students standing around watching. I told my mom this must have been what it felt like for Jesus. She said Jesus wasn&amp;#039;t in a tube sock, but I said he was just wandering around wearing a toga. ESQ: I saw the hard-R version of 21 and Over. I can&amp;#039;t imagine what else could have been in there and got cut just to make even the hard R. MT: Thematically all the elements are there, but there was a lot more. We improvised a lot and if we kept everything it would be a 10-hour-long movie. When you sign on for a script, you agree to everything that&amp;#039;s in it. And I felt comfortable with all that stuff \u2014 you want to feel a safety net, and that&amp;#039;s what the directors gave us. ESQ: Your IMDb lists just one piece of trivia about you: that you blushed when you met Nicole Kidman on the set of Rabbit Hole, your first film. MT: The only time I spoke to Nicole when she wasn&amp;#039;t in the world of the movie was about two weeks before, and I tried to act as normal as I could while listening to her, the director, and the director of photography discussing Lars Von Trier, so I stayed out of the way. Then I saw her on set and tried to say hi, and she turned away. That&amp;#039;s when I realized when she&amp;#039;s working on set, she just stays in concentration on her part. I thought I&amp;#039;d messed up and thought I wasn&amp;#039;t supposed to talk to the other actors on set \u2014 I&amp;#039;d only done theater before, so I didn&amp;#039;t know. But she was just focused on giving an incredible performance and at the end of the movie she gave me a hug and said she was sorry she wasn&amp;#039;t trying to be unfriendly she was just focused on keeping an air of mystery.  ESQ: In Spectacular Now, you&amp;#039;re playing a high school kid who&amp;#039;s going through a ton, but you&amp;#039;re almost like the Ferris Bueller of your school \u2014 coasting through life with a great girl and job, a smile and an attitude \u2014 but secretly drinking way too much. What drew you to that kind of role now? MT: It was the best script I&amp;#039;d ever read. It had all those elements in it. When I first started getting into acting, I was doing improv in acting class, and I had done a serious monologue and everyone was cracking up laughing and I went to the drama teacher and said I don&amp;#039;t want to be the class clown anymore, I want to do serious work, too, and they loved that, and so I started mixing in drama. He&amp;#039;s a cool charming guy but with a lot of depth. In a lot shallower script, you wouldn&amp;#039;t see the problems he&amp;#039;s having, or the fact that he&amp;#039;s searching for a father figure, and the broken home life that&amp;#039;s revealed, and looking for guidance in life while just having that empty feeling. I was excited, but nervous about being able to do it. I had two auditions for it, because the first time I bombed, and so I begged for the second. I then heard they had switched directors, and I told my agent to get me back in there. The second audition I didn&amp;#039;t do very well either. Then a year later it came around again with James Ponsoldt, we met in a bar and had a couple drinks, and I got it. It&amp;#039;s for mature audiences even though it seems like a young adult story. It reminds you of your first love, that time in your life. I&amp;#039;ve had guys come up to me after saying after they saw it they just had to call their girlfriend. ESQ: So are you done with party roles, the reckless irresponsible guys? Or will you go back and forth? MT: I don&amp;#039;t know. I&amp;#039;m proud of everything I&amp;#039;ve done. If it&amp;#039;s comedy, it&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;cause I think it&amp;#039;s funny. If it&amp;#039;s a drama, it&amp;#039;s impactful. I&amp;#039;m leaning towards dramas now because I wrapped a couple comedies in a row, and Divergent is something completely different. I don&amp;#039;t like watching myself, but it&amp;#039;s easier on me when I don&amp;#039;t have to carry a lot of the comedy. But I enjoy making comedies but dramas come more naturally. ESQ: So many movies are heavy-handed with alcoholism or don&amp;#039;t let teens drink at all. But this movie dealt with it very differently, very subtly. How did you guys find that approach, and what was your process for preparing? MT: I grew up in Florida, and Now takes place in Georgia, so it wasn&amp;#039;t foreign to me that kids were drinking in high school or younger. When I was 13, my buddy and I would take a case of Old Milwaukee from his grandfather on Tuesday, hide it in the woods next to my house till Friday, then drink it and ride our bikes around to a buddy&amp;#039;s house or girls&amp;#039; houses on Friday. The subtlety here came from the script, we wanted to handle it delicately, but when they said he takes a sip from his whiskey flask, I figured out half a splash. He wasn&amp;#039;t fully loaded most of the time, just mostly giving him a nice little tingle, and then James in his shot selections helped put it across. ESQ: What about the sex scene? MT: For prep, it was going to be my first sex scene in this movie, and I thought I&amp;#039;d buff out, and Shailene said no I don&amp;#039;t think so, have a little belly. So for a couple months, I didn&amp;#039;t go to the gym and drank a little more. It was awesome until I finished Now and had three weeks to prepare for Two Night Stand and knew I was taking my shirt off again, so I had to workout really hard. There&amp;#039;s a little bit of leftover Sutter in him. ESQ: Well, you were also naked except for a sock in 21 and Over. MT: Yeah a buddy and I Skyped to do our workouts on that one. ESQ: Divergent is an enormous, Hunger Games-style event movie. What&amp;#039;s it about? MT: I play Peter, he&amp;#039;s one of the Intiiators. Society has broken down into five factions, and he&amp;#039;s in a warrior faction and all the others are defined by conditions like Abnegation, Dauntless, Candid, etc. You pick what faction you&amp;#039;re in after high school. You can pick the same one as parents or different, but you never see them again either way. Peter is kind of an asshole, you could say. ESQ: Are you teamed up with Shailene, or is she a rival? MT: We&amp;#039;re rivals. I&amp;#039;m not giving anything away because everything is in the books and millions have read them. Early on, we&amp;#039;re in an anything-goes fist fight so the second week of filming, I&amp;#039;m beating Shailene up. ESQ: There are various levels of buildup for an actor and a movie in the Hollywood hype machine. So far, you&amp;#039;ve done low-key or mid-level movies, but Divergent will have such a giant operation behind it. Do you feel pressure from that, and what was it like working with Shailene on such a different level? MT: For me, pressure is self-imposed, and it&amp;#039;s good for me. The best actors are the most prepared because it&amp;#039;s all imaginary and you have to know the character inside out. But this was a new challenge, playing against type as a villainous guy. It got me in shape due to combat, fighting and gun work. I played sports all my life, knew some wrestling and Muy Thai. Shailene is awesome and for her to do this movie is a lot of work. I wrapped two-and-a-half weeks ago, and she&amp;#039;s still there. Now shot six pages a day, but a big studio movie shoots two. It&amp;#039;s tough to carry a movie that big on your shoulders but she&amp;#039;s doing a great job. She treats everyone with respect and makes everyone around her feel special. ESQ: So how&amp;#039;d you get into acting? MT: In Christmas videos, it&amp;#039;s funny, my sisters were singing Christmas songs, doing plays, and I&amp;#039;m sitting in the corner doing lectures and dancing. And I asked, Why didn&amp;#039;t I get my own show? Mom said, They put in the practice. My mom loves music, we all play it, and she loved the controlled chaos of one singing, another drumming, and then playing clarinet. We played sports together but in third grade, the school said they needed help with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, so I went in for it. I really thought I&amp;#039;d be a sportscaster like on ESPN Sportscenter \u2014 I thought that was funny and witty and talked about sports and that&amp;#039;s great. But my sophomore year of high school, an awesome new drama teacher showed up, and a buddy said let&amp;#039;s give drama a shot, and we put a lot of ideas and work in and recruited girls to be a part of it. My drama teacher in high school, I give her all the credit for really showing me to know and grow in my career as an actor. But when I was a kid, I loved Jaws and Indiana Jones but I wasn&amp;#039;t that kid who watched a ton of movies. So director James Ponsoldt talked to me about the importance of studying other great films. I wouldn&amp;#039;t have known about James without someone showing me his film Smashed on DVD. He really allowed actors time to breathe and have an opportunity. He likes long takes and lets scenes evolve.  ESQ: So you didn&amp;#039;t watch old movies, but I think this is the best teen movie since Say Anything. Have you seen any of the &amp;#039;80s teen classics, or are you actually unfamiliar with them? MT: I&amp;#039;d never seen Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, or Say Anything. But while filming, the writers gave credit to those movies. They had asked teens what their favorite teen movie was and they kept hearing Harry Potter. So they decided to make a new great teen film. At the wrap party, they gave me all those on DVD, but I still haven&amp;#039;t watched Breakfast Club or all of Sixteen Candles. And I saw Say Anything maybe a couple months ago and really dug it. What&amp;#039;s the one with the guy from Grey&amp;#039;s Anatomy? ESQ: Can&amp;#039;t Buy Me Love. MT: Yeahhhhh, that was it. That&amp;#039;s a great one. ESQ: So what&amp;#039;s next for you? MT: Acting is such a high art, and coming from theater, I know how hard it is and respect the craft. I want to look back when it ends, and say I challenged myself. I wanted to be an actor you always remember, and those who are the great ones. That&amp;#039;s just a personal journey. If you&amp;#039;re too comfortable you&amp;#039;re taking it too easy. The director can direct you for two months but before that it&amp;#039;s just you and your internal drive. I want people to go to my movies and know it&amp;#039;ll be good, and with great actors. You never know what you&amp;#039;ll learn from just staying in the same space with them. Hopefully I&amp;#039;ll be able to work with directors who are awesome and challenging. You don&amp;#039;t want to do a movie you just watch once. ESQ: Well, good luck getting to Ibiza. MT: Hey, just get me out of Valley Village and I&amp;#039;ll be happy. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/interviews/a24191/miles-teller-spectacular-now-interview/>