Guardians Of The Galaxy newcomer Will Poulter is just getting used to his superhero era

LOS ANGELES – Even when people do not know Will Poulter’s name, they recognise his face.

It helps that the 30-year-old Brit has been acting for half his life and has racked up an eclectic list of film credits, although he is also blessed with a pair of distinctive eyebrows that are as curvy and expressive as a fleur-de-lis.

They pull people in, even if those people are not always sure where to place the on-the-cusp actor.

“To be honest,” Poulter said, “the bulk of my interactions are, ‘Do I know you from somewhere? Are you the guy from that thing? What have I seen you in?’”

Often, this forces Poulter to cycle through a list of his projects until something clicks.

Do they remember him as the shy dork who received kissing lessons from Jennifer Aniston in crime comedy We’re The Millers (2013), or the brash friend who meets a bad end in horror flick Midsommar (2018)?

Or maybe they grew up on some of the young-adult franchises he co-starred in, like the Maze Runner film series (2014 to 2018) and The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader (2010)?

Poulter is a patient man, but his willingness to oblige a stranger can still lead to some awkward moments. “No one wants to be put in a position where you’re reciting your CV,” he said.

But now, Poulter’s “where do you know me from” conversations will receive a cut-to-the-chase trump card: He has joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, playing the caped antihero Adam Warlock in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, which is showing in Singapore cinemas.

Described in the comic books as a genetically engineered perfect being, Poulter’s Warlock has glittery gold skin and dangerous powers. Imagine an Oscar statuette that can shoot cosmic beams out of its hands and you are halfway there.

Introduced flying through outer space to the stirring guitar rock of American rock band Heart’s 1975 song Crazy On You, Warlock is a significant figure in Marvel lore, although he is still coming into his own when viewers meet him in the third and final Guardians film.

Ejected from his birthing cocoon a bit too early, Warlock has a sense of right and wrong that is up for grabs, which gives Poulter several surprising beats to play as he butts heads with the Guardians and considers joining their side.

“He brought life and reality to someone who is essentially a child in the body of an adult,” said the film’s American writer-director James Gunn, who picked Poulter over a wide field of hot Hollywood hopefuls. “And,” Gunn added, “he got yoked.”

Ah, yes, the great yokening. Although he was often cast as scrawny geeks earlier in his career, Poulter has been through a recent gym-aided glow-up: 1.88m tall and Marvel-muscular with a thick head of blond hair, he has followed in the path of fellow British actors Nicholas Hoult and Dev Patel, who played realistically awkward teenagers on-screen before blossoming into Hollywood heart-throbs.

Just a few years ago, Poulter was bullied on social media for his looks, but after his physical transformation, he has been the subject of thirst tweets and Internet boyfriend articles.

It is enough to give a guy whiplash, and Poulter said he is parsing the head trip.

“It’s quite odd because I’ve sort of formed my personality around looking a certain way,” he admitted. “Psychologically, I’m still 5-foot-4 because that’s what I was at school. Even being tall is something that I’m still getting used to.”

Although it can come with its own special baggage, Poulter has always considered acting to be a safe space.

As a pre-teen growing up in Hammersmith, London, he would spend his entire school week looking forward to drama class on Friday morning, a place where he could kick off his shoes and explore creatively.

When he was 12, his drama teachers encouraged him to audition for the charming indie comedy Son Of Rambow (2007). He landed the film’s breakout role on his first try and filmed it for eight weeks during his summer holiday.

“For that to be my introduction to the film industry, I couldn’t have asked for a gentler, nicer, more wholesome experience,” he said. “It really lit the fire in me to want to do it again.”

Poulter has worked steadily ever since – you may have also seen his supporting roles in prestige dramas like The Revenant (2015) and Detroit (2017) – while also navigating the unique challenge of growing up in the public eye.

At 19, his role as awkward virgin Kenny in We’re The Millers elevated his profile, but led to an uptick in jeers and catcalls from strangers. Later, after playing a bespectacled computer game designer in the 2018 Black Mirror sci-fi episode Bandersnatch, some social media users made such cutting comments about his looks that Poulter announced he would be stepping back from Twitter to preserve his mental health.

That is why, now that the tide has turned towards appreciative tweets instead of cruel jokes, Poulter is sceptical about putting any stock into what social media has to say about him.

“It shouldn’t inform how I treat myself, because I don’t know those people,” he said. “One of the dangers with social media is we can conflate things that exist online to the real world without even questioning it. We just carry the one and don’t really ask whether it actually adds up at the end of the day.”

If people think his physical transformation happened overnight, Poulter worries they will believe he turned to enhanced means to attain it.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of pressure out there on young people, both men and women, regarding body image,” he said. “I’m being kind of careful in the words, but if you’re going to promote the process by which you achieved said body goal, I think you have to be fully transparent about how you got there.”

Meanwhile, Poulter said he genuinely did not know whether Marvel has bigger plans for him beyond Vol. 3. “It kind of hinges on how people respond to the character,” he said. “If the fans don’t like Adam Warlock, obviously I’m going to be pretty gutted. My family’s opinion means a lot, but it’s not necessarily going to bring me back as the character.”

But even if it proves to be a one-off, playing Warlock was a valuable experience.

When he started on the production, Gunn told him that he should not be afraid to mess up, even if those mistakes might make him feel self-conscious.

For someone who struggles with how he can be perceived, that advice was scary but also freeing: It meant that he could take big swings and feel safe, and that he could learn to forgive himself when things did not go to plan.

Those are the sort of realisations that keep Poulter enamoured with acting even when so many other things about his chosen career can be tricky.

“It can be stressful, it can be painful and, plainly speaking, it can be difficult to do and a strain on your mental health, but I also think it’s very necessary to reflect on your own psyche and think about its impact on the world around you,” Poulter said. “It’s a lovely psychoanalytical journey that I’m really enjoying.” NYTIMES