BOX-OFFICE STAR, RECORDING ARTIST ANDACCOMPLISHED POOL PLAYER - THERE IS LITTLE THISBABY-FACED ALL-ROUNDER CAN’T DO.t’s 5:17pm in Brooklyn, and 23-year-old Ansel Elgort is
leant over his latest prized possession – a vintage, red felt
pool table (received for free, in exchange for an Instagram
shout-out). Elgort pulls back and strikes – sending a ball
straight into a corner pocket.
He’s just home from an afternoon at Instagram, hanging out with
CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom (no, not that Miranda Kerr guy,
but equally healthy, wealthy, and wise, we’re sure). Elgort’s dressed in
head-to-toe Prada, courtesy of a care package that was sent over a day
earlier. A double-breasted Prada suit is lazily draped on the couch.
Elgort’s lifelong friend, Jonah Kaner, dressed in black-on-black-on-
black, considers his next shot, mulling the table before him.
Elsewhere – curiously – there’s a scented candle going on.
“Even though I’m just hanging out with my homie and I’m
a young dude, I like things to smell nice.”
A year ago, there was less Prada and no vintage pool table. A year
ago, the meetings looked a little
different. Sure, Elgort – star of
tween-swooning films like The Fault in
Our Stars and the Divergent franchise
- had a sizeable career at his feet. But
for the New York-born, sometimes-DJ,
mostly-YA-actor, everything pivoted
with Baby Driver, the BPM-laced
driving-action film that stole the US
summer. Elgort, who’s coiffed hair and
brooding stare could stop a teen reader
in her tracks, took a leap toward
mainstream audiences and stuck the
landing. (Baby Driver R o t t e n To m a t o e s
rating: 93 per cent. Baby Driver
box-office gross: $290m. Baby Driver budget: $43m.)
Since then, everything’s seemed like an additional win –
his budding friendship with Jamie Foxx, the aforementioned
tightness with the world of Insta (Elgort’s creeping toward
nine million followers). But really, he’s been winning for a while.
The five major-release films he put out prior to Baby Driver grossed
over a billion dollars. On the music front, it’s two years since he
signed a record deal with Island Records, leading to a handful of
totally competent house singles. Yeah, he missed out on the role
of Han Solo in an upcoming Star Wars spin-off, but when you view
that as the miss he had to have, eventually, it’s kinda a win too
(“You know what, I’d rather be Baby Driver than Han Solo,
any day of the week”).
I
“Obviously, a year like this year... it’s not going to happen all the
time,” says Elgort, with the kind of restraint you wouldn’t associate
with someone on the right side of 25. “From now on, I’d like every year
of my life to be the best year of my life. But I don’t want those years to
be defined by success – I’d rather just have a good time, and be happy.”
(He smacks another decent shot end-to-end, it takes a sweet cut,
plenty of backspin.)
For now, he’s rightly trying hard not to get desensitised – not
by the fashion runways, the music downloads, the international
gallivanting, the monolithic co-stars, the millions of likes,
retweets and followers.
“I definitely think that doing The Fault in Our Stars put me in a great
place with my audience. The people who I really look up to, who are
idols of mine, I don’t follow them the way my fans follow me. I don’t
‘check in’ on Tom Hardy on a daily basis – and I love Tom Hardy.”
(He nails a tricky bank shot into a middle pocket. “My friends call
those Ansel shots.” He pockets two
more, in a row. Jonah’s suddenly
gone from three balls up to tied
on the black.)
Ask his fans and they’d say
Ansel’s love for Tom has nothing
on their love of Ansel. Because this is
an entirely different brand of fandom.
“And I embraced it. For some
young actors, it’s the ‘cool’ thing to
say you hate everything – that your
life is terrible now that everyone
knows you. But it’s just not the
case. I don’t really have much to
complain about to be honest.”
Elgort, here, has struck at the crux of what’s sent him to
true stardom – at what is (sorry) Millennium Falcon jump-to-
hyperspace speeds.
Look closely at his work – music or film. Elgort’s emphatic lack
of self-consciousness may be his secret weapon. Watch him spin and
gyrate and pout in his music video for ‘Thief’, in a manner which
would literally render the careers of thousands of debut solo artists
dead. Watch him slide around the streets of Atlanta, jamming to
tunes in Baby Driver, in scenes that could’ve – so easily – gone the
way of Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 3. (Don’t remember?
Look it up – it’s bad.). Ansel is Ansel, always – and proudly so.
Thud. With his second chance on the black he buries it, clean.
And to the surprise of no-one, Ansel Elgort wins again. n“You know what,
I’d rather be
Baby Driver than
Han Solo, any day
of the week.”
MEN OF THE YEAR 2017 GQ.COM.AU 177