HWD Profile

Miles Teller, Hollywood’s Most Misunderstood Millennial, Grows Up

In the span of six years and 15 film roles, Teller has charmed audiences and impressed critics by channeling a range of young characters with pluck, verve, and vigor. In Bleed for This, Teller attempts his trickiest transformation yet—convincing the world he is ready for on- (and offscreen) adulthood.
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LASER FOCUS
He’s compromised himself for at least one role in the past, and will not make that same mistake again. Referencing the oft-quoted anthem for stars who take big-budget roles to balance out the indies—“do one for them, one for me”—Teller says, “I don’t want to do one for them. I don’t want to do one for anybody other than myself.”
Photograph by Brian Bowen Smith. Styled by Ryan Young.

Time moves differently for young actors than it does for actresses. With women, Hollywood famously favors youth, heaping awards and anachronistic middle-age roles on ingenues before they are swallowed into industry obscurity by the quicksand of age. But for actors, it’s an entirely different ballgame. At this year’s Oscars the juxtaposition was on clear display: Brie Larson, 26, and Alicia Vikander, 27, swept the female acting awards, while the men’s acting trophies were claimed by Leonardo DiCaprio, 41, and Mark Rylance, 56.

Miles Teller, 29, and potentially one of the great actors of his young generation knows the rules. “There’s a reason only one male actor has won best lead actor before the age of 30,” he explains during lunch in Studio City this past September, referencing Adrien Brody’s 2003 win for The Pianist—and treading carefully as the conversation meanders into the minefield of gender differences in Hollywood. Perhaps that’s why Teller, whose boyish face has served him well in the first chapter of his career—the one that introduced his natural intensity and charm in midsize indies and awards-season fare like The Spectacular Now and Whiplash—seems eager to advance to actor adulthood.

When he names the actors he admires, all are a generation older than him: Michael Shannon, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, and Joel Edgerton. They’re also all performers who have mostly followed their compasses towards complex character roles through Hollywood’s overgrown jungle of reboots and sequels—territory in which Teller was almost lost last summer with the disastrous Fantastic Four and an accompanying Esquire cover story that spent nearly 2,000 words wondering if the young star was “a dick.” Now, a year later, and the film largely forgotten, Teller has lined up a few roles that could float him over the transom to movie maturity including, this week, that of Vinny Pazienza, a true life mid-90s prizefighter who returns to the ring after a devastating neck injury, in Bleed for This. It’s his first full-blown transformation role—one that required an accent coach, trainer, nutritionist, and some help from the mustache gods above.

“I can’t grow much facial hair, so that was the max I could do to mess with my look,” he laughs of the thin ‘stache he sprouted to play Pazienza. “It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time.”

When the film, produced by Martin Scorsese, hits theaters Friday, it will be a test to see whether audiences can take him seriously as an adult—and, more importantly, as a true leading man. But at this moment in time, at this modest Valley restaurant, the actor still looks so youthful that he is having a hard time passing for an adult—at least with the waitstaff.

“Here you go, partner,” a waiter announces, sliding the actor’s salad in front of him.

“Did he just call me ‘partner?,” Teller asks incredulously once the waiter ambles out of view, presumably back into whatever Western he stumbled out of. “I feel like a little kid who just ordered a pancake smiley face or something.”

THE FIGHTER
Teller plays real-life boxer Vinny Pazienza in his next film Bleed for This, out in theaters Friday.


Photograph by Brian Bowen Smith. Styled by Ryan Young. Grooming by Marissa Machado. Polo by Orlebar Brown, Trousers by Incotex, Shoes by Tod’s.

The confusion is kinda understandable, though: this afternoon, Teller is clean-shaven and tousle-haired, his forehead still enviably free of lines and, unlike actresses his age, still full of movement. Wearing a black graphic tee shirt and jeans, he has the easygoing charm of some of his characters. In conversation, he comes off as the kind of no-frills guy who considers friends his most valuable asset and remembers the highlight of the Met Ball being “the food.” (“It was really good!” he protests in defense. “That’s really what I remember.”) Just days earlier, Teller took a personal step into adulthood that mirrors his professional one: he bought his first home.

“I just moved, so this was the only shirt I could find,” Teller says, tugging apologetically at his tee. “I thought I was going to have to wear my wardrobe from Rabbit Hole,” he continues, explaining how one of the only boxes of clothing he found in his moving debris contained outfits from his first-ever film—the 2010 indie starring Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart. Though he’s only been working for six years, Teller has already appeared in films spread all over the genre spectrum—breaking out in the reboot of Footloose, reaching critical highs in The Spectacular Now and Whiplash, and ticking the superhero and young-adult genres off his list with Fantastic Four and Divergent.

When Teller re-united with Eckhart for Bleed for This, the latter noticed a dramatic change in his returning co-star: “He is totally different—much more confident, much more outspoken, more in control,” Eckhart tells us.

Photograph by Brian Bowen Smith. Styled by Ryan Young. Grooming by Marissa Machado. Tank Top by Calvin Klein Underwear, Boxers by Turnbull & Asser.

“I would be so happy doing plays in New York,” says Teller, while contemplating his future. “There’s this suspension of belief in theater, whereas with film they say, ‘He’s not the right look for this.’”

Photograph by Brian Bowen Smith. Styled by Ryan Young. Grooming by Marissa Machado. Shirt by Bottega Veneta, Trousers by Anderson & Sheppard, Tank Top by Calvin Klein Underwear, Shoes by Church’s.

Realistically, Teller probably could have bought a home a few years earlier—but he was holding off until he paid off his parents’ mortgage. To celebrate the milestone, Teller flew back to his childhood house in the 140,000-person town of Citrus County, Florida. His family gathered on the doorstep and lit the mortgage paperwork on fire.

Most of Teller’s friends, some of whom followed him out to Los Angeles, are working-class—construction workers, Marines, members of the Army and the Air Force. Whether a coincidence or not, Teller has recently gravitated towards characters who demonstrate this sort of hardworking mentality, including his blue-collar boxer in Bleed for This; an Army sergeant in Thank You for Your Service; and a firefighter in Granite Mountain.

“Maybe it’s the antiquated masculine identity of, ‘Don’t [complain], just work, just do your job, do it well, be selfless,’ that I admire,” Teller says. Although he is the first to admit his job is nowhere near as grueling as his friends’ vocations, Teller relishes the opportunity to go full bore for a character—he lost 20 pounds and 12 percent of his body fat for Bleed for This, and worked with one-time Sugar Ray Leonard trainer Darrell Foster to prepare.

“I’d never played a part where so much was required of me for so long,” he says.

Would he give himself over—mind, body, and mustache—to a character again?

“Hell yeah.”

JUMP START
Teller has appeared in  15 films in just six years—his first being 2010’s Rabbit Hole, in which he starred opposite Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart.


Photograph by Brian Bowen Smith. Styled by Ryan Young. Grooming by Marissa Machado. Trousers by Anderson & Sheppard, Tank Top by Calvin Klein Underwear, Shoes by Church’s.

Bleed for This brings Teller back to theater screens several months after Todd Phillips’s summer comedy War Dogs, and back to a publicity circuit where, last year, Teller was burned by that Esquire cover story—so scathing that the New York Times compiled a history of tough celebrity profiles in its honor. (“So yeah, he is kind of a dick,” author Anna Peele concludes. Peele did not respond to a request for comment.) Teller brushes off the piece when it inevitably comes up.

“I try not to let that stuff affect my day to day. I’m not the kind of person to Google myself, because you’ll find whatever you’re looking for,” he says. “If you want to read something that says you’re the greatest actor that ever lived, if you want to find something that is pretty hurtful, you’ll find it.”

“It gets frustrating when you know the person you are, but somebody writes something that couldn’t be further from the truth, and that gets a lot of circulation,” he adds. “There’s obviously a part of you that wants to feel understood . . . ”

He trails off. It seems that Teller, a naturally charismatic person whose in-person sarcasm doesn’t always translate in print, prides himself on being authentic no matter the consequence. And even though he has the relaxed nature of the most popular guy in the senior class, the incident has loomed large enough to make him question whether his own authenticity—a rare commodity among celebrities in today’s tightly publicist-guarded climate—is worth the risk of being mistaken for, well, “a dick.” Today at least, Teller’s general amiability still wins out.

“I like talking to people,” he explains. “Before I came here, even if I was thinking, ‘I’m going to be guarded,’ I can say that, but then I sit down and I just start talking anyway.”

Is a double standard at play? Over the past few years, the Internet has almost fetishized certain actresses who seem “authentic,” declaring them fantasy B.F.F.s and mythologizing them in memes. But Teller was raked over the social-media coals, in the unforgiving way usually reserved for women in Hollywood, because of his authentic faults—a trait whose apparent absence has made the public hate, say, Gwyneth Paltrow. Teller is authentically confident—as opposed to genuinely insecure—but has been belittled for it.

Teller is aware of this assurance that seems to rub some people the wrong way—and can explain his existential ease, his millennial mettle, whatever you want to call it: “People would probably say my mom raised very confident children, but it comes from a place of being comfortable in your own skin . . . Growing up, you’d come to my house on any given day, and my sister’s playing piano, my other sister’s singing, my mom’s playing a tambourine, and I’m drumming. My mom loved this kind of controlled chaos and encouraged us in it.”

The ease helped him on the set of Rabbit Hole, where stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart would not speak to him—part of their method for preparing to play parents of a child that Teller’s character killed in a car accident. Eckhart, who also co-stars in Bleed for This as trainer Kevin Rooney, is the first to admit that he gave Teller a tough initiation.

“On Rabbit Hole, I told production I didn’t want to meet him before—I didn’t even want him to see me,” Eckhart says. “His character is responsible for the death of my son and my character understandably had anger issues about that. So we played that meeting out in real time. He came into my character’s kitchen and the first time I ever met him was when I gave him the full wrath of my grieving character. And he took it great.”

In fact, Eckhart’s agent, Tracy Brennan, was so impressed, she signed the young actor and continues to work with him to this day. And when Eckhart and Teller re-united, five years later, Eckhart noticed a marked change in his co-star.

“He is totally different—much more confident, much more outspoken, more in control. You know, Miles didn’t fall into this. He knew that he wanted to get into acting and is very cognizant of what he will do next. He is concerned about his technique, how to get better, working with good people. He is doing everything right and I like to see that. It makes me proud.”

QUICK CHANGE
When Teller re-united with Eckhart for Bleed for This, the latter noticed a dramatic change in his returning co-star: “He is totally different—much more confident, much more outspoken, more in control,” Eckhart tells us.


Photograph by Brian Bowen Smith. Styled by Ryan Young. Grooming by Marissa Machado. Sweater by A.P.C., Pants by Ermenegildo Zegna, Shoes by Tod’s.

The most difficult aspect of getting into character to play Vinny Pazienza? Growing a mustache: “I can’t grow much facial hair, so . . . it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time.”

Photograph by Brian Bowen Smith. Styled by Ryan Young. Grooming by Marissa Machado.

One of Teller’s assets has always been the way he is comfortable traversing various social landscapes—be it an event filled with intimidating, Oscar-winning actors or a get-together with his high-school classmates. “My buddies and I threw all the parties,” Teller explains, “but I was also in National Honors Society, president of Drama Club, in Key Club, and honors classes. I was at every party, but I graduated with a 4.1 or 4.2. I can relate to a lot of different people in a way that is not bullshit.”

Indeed, several years back, when Teller was on the awards-circuit for Whiplash, I spotted him at a party at the Chateau Marmont. While most of the attendees mingled on the balcony, Robert Duvall sat solo inside, lounging on one of those oversize chairs that comfortably fits one person but requires two people to really commit to squeezing in. Teller was the only party guest who not only felt comfortable approaching the Oscar winner, but also slid right into the chair, almost cuddling with Don Corleone’s consigliere for a fireside chat that lasted hours.

“His manager came up to me and said, ‘Mr. Duvall wants to talk to you,’ Teller explains when his memory of the encounter is jogged. “His manager said how he doesn’t like a lot of the young actors, but he loved Whiplash and wanted to talk to me.’ He talked to me for like two hours. He gave me advice,” Teller recalls, stretching to remember one conversation amid a surreal awards season. “We also talked a lot about dancing. He loves dancing, and beef.”

But Teller also has his moments of professional insecurity. After his career high of Whiplash—which earned a best-picture Oscar nomination—it looked as though Teller was going to re-team with Whiplash writer/director Damien Chazelle for the musical La La Land. Ultimately, though, the filmmaker ended up casting Ryan Gosling as the male lead in his follow-up film. Asked whether he has any hard feelings, especially as rave reviews pour out of the Toronto and Venice Film Festivals, Teller says, “I’m a pretty strong believer that everything happens for a reason. I’m happy Damien made the film he wanted to make . . . I don’t get jealous of good reviews. There’s movies that were reviewed terribly that I cherish. I think once you start getting envious of accolades, it’s never going to be enough.” (Though Teller did not end up co-starring in the film, he predicts, “I will do something musical.”)

He refers to one particularly high-profile disappointment as “the only time my girlfriend’s ever seen me say, ‘My career is over.’ He adds, “I couldn’t believe that was the movie they were putting out there. Honestly. I said, ‘That’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen.’ People think you work harder on good movies, but that’s not true. You work harder on bad movies, because you’re trying to fucking make it work.”

Photograph by Brian Bowen Smith. Styled by Ryan Young. Grooming by Marissa Machado. Sweater by A.P.C.

Teller recently filmed the military drama Thank You for Your Service, playing an Army staff sergeant battling PTSD opposite Amy Schumer, who makes her dramatic debut in the film. He had a blast getting to know the Peabody-winning Comedy Central star: “She wears these ridiculous wigs and her character had a peacoat fetish. She’s be wearing a blue peacoat. I would talk to the director for 10 minutes, turn around, and she would be wearing a purple peacoat. I called her character Amanda and the Amazing Technicolor Peacoat.” The two share a particularly difficult dramatic scene, and Teller promises that her serious acting is just as strong as her comedic talents.

With this, Teller pivots onto the subject of actors being pigeonholed and reveals that he has his eye on a different medium in which he would be allowed more range.

“I would be so happy doing plays in New York,” says Teller, who studied drama at New York University. “When I was doing theater in college, I could play a 40-year-old man who lost his son. There’s this suspension of belief in theater, whereas with film they say, ‘He’s not the right look for this.’”

Teller certainly has the time to do stage work—for the first time in his career, he has slowed his pace, after appearing in 10 films over the past three years. He says he realized that he was only burning himself out, and it’s not like movie audiences “get a pamphlet before each screening that says, ‘Yeah, so Miles just came off a movie where he played a PTSD staff sergeant. He only had six weeks in between that project and this.’”

Photograph by Brian Bowen Smith. Styled by Ryan Young. Grooming by Marissa Machado. Shirt by Bottega Veneta, Tank Top by Calvin Klein, Underwear Trousers by Incotex, Jacket (on bed) Officine Générale.

“I’m just curious what I can do when I have a couple months to prepare for something,” Teller says. And after the experience of putting out a film he hated, Teller is determined not to let a paycheck role mar his filmography again. Referencing the oft-quoted anthem for stars that take big-budget roles to balance out the indies—“do one for them, one for me”—Teller says, “Fuck that. I don’t want to do one for them. I don’t want to do one for anybody other than myself.”

Our waiter comes by and offers us one final refill. This time, perhaps having overheard bits of our long career-related discussion, he keeps any patronizing pet names to himself.

When the waiter leaves, Teller announces triumphantly, “He didn’t call me ‘partner’!”