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52 JULY 2018 VOGUE.COM``````A FEW DAYS BEFORE I meet him, Lakeith Stanfield, theineffably cool, California-raised 26-year-old star of the newfilm Sorry to Bother You, does something that I find com-pletely insane: He tweets his phone number. Last time he didthis, it was nice, he tells me; he had a chance to talk to people.But that was then—sometime between his breakout role in2013’s Short Term 12 and pivotal parts in culture-quakingfilms like Selma, Straight Outta Compton, and Get Out, andDonald Glover’s hit TV show, Atlanta.These days Stanfield is a bona fide star—the kind who getscast by Jordan Peele (in Get Out) and Jay-Z (in the rapper’svideo for his song “Moonlight”). And so his gesture at a largerconnectivity means he is immediately deluged; his phone goesberserk. “I couldn’t use it for a while,” he admits. So how doyou establish one of the more interesting careers in Hollywoodin five years or less? If you ask Stanfield, it’s a mix of luckand accident. He met Ava DuVernay at an awards-seasonbrunch; he met Glover while clubbing. (“I bump up againstthis dude with an Afro and good-lookin’ shoes, and I go,``````‘Those are some nice shoes, bro.’ ”) But Stanfield is also anatural performer, loose-limbed and curious, one who grewup trying on his aunt’s wigs in front of the mirror, feeling “likeI was much more than what was confined in my body.” Andhe’s uncompromising—the fact that his work trends towardImportant with a capital I is not the point. “My interest is notnecessarily in having a record of things that are unimpeach-able,” Stanfield says. Movies like Sorry to Bother You—rapperand director Boots Riley’s delirious, magical-realist satire inwhich Stanfield stars as an Oakland telemarketer who stepsinto a nefarious capitalist scheme—are likely to polarize crit-ics. But that energizes him: “I’m not afraid of the response.”As for what’s next, he’d like to be the Joker or “maybeEdward Scissorhands” or “a Kanye West type.” And whilehe does tire of hearing his zaniest lines from Atlanta (“CanI measure your tree?”) quoted back at him, or having “Getout!” hollered at him on the street, he doesn’t fear beingpinned down. “There’s a lot of extra ways I can stretch.”—ALESSANDRA CODINHA``````CALM AND COLLECTEDTHE ACTOR IN A PYERMOSS BLAZER ANDPANTS. CALVIN KLEINUNDERWEAR T-SHIRT.PHOTOGRAPHEDBY RONAN MCKENZIE.SITTINGS EDITOR:TESS HERBERT.``````TALENTSorry,Not Sorr yLakeith Stanfieldcharms Holly wood withhis unapologetic appeal.VLIFEGROOMING, NAIVASHA JOHNSON. PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE HOME OF CHRIS BENZ. PRODUCED BY PINEAPPLE CREATIVE. DETAILS, SEE IN THIS ISSUE.