Drew Starkey was a day into rehearsals for Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer when he discovered himself rolling across the flooring in a sweaty clinch with Daniel Craig.

“We jumped into it, simply grabbing and throwing our our bodies on prime of each other, rolling round, getting intermingled,” Starkey recollects, “I believe it unlocked one thing subconsciously, gave us a degree of comfortability and familiarity with one another, in order that, the whole lot after that was very straightforward.”

What got here after was a few of the most graphic and intimate scenes Starkey has ever placed on display. Guadagnino’s adaptation of the William S. Burroughs’ novel —written within the early ‘50s however not printed till 1985 — sees Craig enjoying an American expat and heroin addict (Burroughs in lightly-fictionalized type) lolling about Mexico Metropolis who turns into obsessive about Eugene (Starkly), a younger pupil whose sexual ambiguity makes him all of the extra mysterious and fascinating. What follows is a tortured story of unrequited love and sometimes requited lust. With a good variety of express moments.

The movie premiered at Venice and can also be screening at Toronto. Reviewers have commented on how far Craig’s efficiency lies from his most well-known flip as James Bond. But it surely’s as large a soar for the 30-year-old Starkey who, till now, was finest identified for teen-slanting fare like Love, Simon and The Hate You Give, or for enjoying Rafe Cameron within the Netflix journey collection Outer Banks. His flip in Queer is one other factor totally. The movie was picked up forward of its premiere on the Venice Movie Pageant by A24, which is planning a launch later this yr. It’s sure to attract a brand new fanbase to Staff Starkey.

“[Starkey] quietly sizzles within the high-waisted trousers and knit shirts of the time,” THR wrote in its breathless assessment of Queer. “Eugene wears his preppy wardrobe with a pure panache about which he appears oblivious.”

It’s a good distance from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains the place Starkey was born and raised — “my favourite place on earth. I adore it and miss it dearly” — the oldest of 4 and son of a school basketball coach and college counselor. “I had no direct connection to filmmaking, to motion pictures or theater,” he notes. He “type of stumbled” into performing whereas learning at Western Carolina College, becoming a member of their stage and display program. “I discovered rather a lot, I failed rather a lot, however I nonetheless had no inclination of how you can step into performing in motion pictures or tv.” After commencement, Starkely received an agent, moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and “began auditioning like loopy.” Slowly, the roles began coming. Initially, they have been largely blink-and-you-miss-them elements with generic character names — ‘playing solider’ in an episode of PBS collection Mercy Avenue, ‘frat boy’ in Bart Layton’s American Animals.

“The turning level I believe was Love, Simon and The Hate You Give (each 2018),” says Starkey. (Although within the latter, his character, “cop” nonetheless doesn’t have a reputation.) “These have been two motion pictures that have been actually validating for me. However each job was an enormous step ahead. I keep in mind doing one scene in Ozark (enjoying ‘boy’) proper out of school. I didn’t know what the present was, however I knew it was Netflix. And I used to be like, ‘Wow, I suppose I can do a Netflix present.’”

He received the job in Queer virtually by chance when one other director, who had seen Starkey audition for an additional function, handed his tape to Guadagnino.

“I received a name from my agent who mentioned: ‘Luca Guadagnino needs to have breakfast with you,’” he recollects. “So I had breakfast with him, and we talked about our lives, we talked in regards to the climate, and we talked about Los Angeles, and he introduced up this venture that he’s been engaged on and requested if I may put a number of scenes on tape.”

Extra months, extra meals, and extra conversations later, he received the decision. He was in.

Starkey knew the supply materials. Type of.

“I type of half-read, or pretended to learn Junkie in highschool and pretended to grasp what it meant,” he says. “With the Beat Technology, I actually linked with Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac, these sorts of cats. However I knew about Burroughs, and his affect throughout all types of mediums, punk rock and artwork. He’s type of the godfather of this technology”

However enjoying Eugene “was very daunting at first, the function scared me,” says Starkey, “as a result of it was totally different than a lot of the characters I’ve performed. There’s a lot subtlety and delicacy to it. It was an actual problem as a result of nobody can learn him, nobody understands him, least of all (Craig’s character) Lee. So it was my job to attempt, as finest I may, to grasp what was happening inside this man.”

The confusion and (sexual) ambiguity in Eugene, says Starkey, can also be a mirrored image of the time “when (homosexual males) didn’t actually have a language to outline themselves.”

The movie’s erotic scenes may appear surprising to some, however Starkey took them in stride.

“I believe as American audiences, we could be very uptight about that stuff, intercourse scenes, no matter, which is unusual,” he says, “It feels just a little prudish to be like ‘ooh if that’s in a film that taboo’ but when it’s on our telephones, it’s advantageous. [I’m glad] sexuality is coming again to the theaters as a result of I believe it’s crucial we combine sexuality into our tales, it’s the best way to raised perceive ourselves. You be taught a lot about an individual by wanting on the manner they’re intimate with each other.”

And if that individual is Daniel Craig, it’s finest to only get sweaty and begin wrestling.

“Rolling round on the ground with somebody, the second day you met, is a fairly good option to get to know them.”