Douglas Booth has the kind of face that you might consider launching civil war over. A believable Romeo, in other words, which is the role that in 2013, declared the actor one to watch (which is a really pleasant experience, did we mention?). Most recently, Booth graced the screen in Jupiter Ascending (space was cool, but his real childhood dream was to rock out on the trumpet) and, with about a dozen other beautiful, up-and-coming Hollywood Brits, in the Riot Club, a difficult-to-stomach critique of a posh social club devoted to elitism and debauchery and based on Oxford's very real Bullingdon Club. From his home in rainy London, Dougie Fresh—a nickname Mr. Fresh has never understood—rang us to talk about modeling for Burberry with Emma Watson, the coming zombie apocalypse, and learning how to pee like Boy George.
Harper's BAZAAR: Did you really have to shave off your eyebrows to play Boy George, one of your earliest roles, in Worried About the Boy?
Douglas Booth: Yeah, I did. Completely shaved them off. I was 17. I had to be kind of brave because they knocked my eyebrows off, and I had to go see all my mates looking like a bug.
HB: What else did you do to transform into Boy?
DB: I read his biography; I spent time with George; I got to wear his original clothes he'd made, like those leather jackets he'd customized and put a thousand safety pins in. Nothing quite like that to get you in the head space of that character.
HB: What was it like meeting him?
DB: Amazing—and bizarre. I remember the first time he visited set was about half way through filming. By that time, I had really become this character. I was working so hard, so there was no time to go out or become me at the end of the day. It was: get home, sleep, wake up, be the character; I was actually living the character for the period we were shooting it. I remember being genuinely confused about how Boy could be on the other side of the room, while I was standing there. It was like looking at my future.
HB: Now, that's some character acting.
DB: I remember filming a scene that he was watching where I walk into the girls' bathroom for a pee because back then, the men had so much more extravagant outfits and makeup that the the men's toilets were completely blocked, and the women's was clear. I went into the stall and sort of kicked the toilet seat up and peed, and George was shouting from behind the monitor, "I never peed standing up! I'd always sit down!"
HB: You recently starred in Jupiter Ascending. Did that fulfill any boyhood astronaut dreams?
DB: Absolutely! Who doesn't want to fly around in a spaceship?
HB: When was the last time you picked up your trumpet?
DB: Over a year ago, probably. I played it for five minutes and realized I wasn't as good as I used to be and put it down. I used to practice every single day, and my music teacher would say, "If you don't practice for a day, you'll notice. If you don't practice for two days, I'll notice. If you don't practice for three days, everyone will notice."
HB: We must have had the same music teacher. I got that lecture verbatim. You have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies coming out next year. What can we expect?
DB: I can't wait for people to see it. Tonally, it's hard to get your head around, especially for English people, because the source of material is so sacred. It stands alone as a great movie even if you take out the zombies. They just add a crazy, new element. It imagines how the upper classes would still continue to operate during a zombie plague, and that's just a mad idea.
HB: So what did playing Romeo do for your love life?
DB: Not very much! I had a girlfriend at the time, and bizarrely enough, she is an actress and was playing Juliet in a radio play of Romeo and Juliet. So we were both playing Romeo and Juliet just not with each other—on different sides of the world
HB: How did you come to model for Burberry's 2009 ad campaign with Emma Watson? Like, really, they wanted you?
DB: Christopher Bailey was looking for young actors and musicians to kind of put around Emma Watson in a campaign, and my publicist at the time knew Christopher Bailey and said, "What do you think about Douglas?" He said, "Yeah, cool," so I went in to meet him, and sort of that happened. It was good fun. I spent a couple of days on set with Christopher and Mario Testino, who is amazing and I adore.
HB: What do you do to unwind?
DB: I bike everywhere. My perfect idea of unwinding would be to cycle through London, along the river, to Hyde Park, have a picnic with my friends, drink a box or big bottle of wine, enjoy the afternoon, and chat and catch up and laugh. There's nothing more relaxing than that.
HB: What's the strangest nickname you get?
DB: Some people call me Dougie Fresh. I don't know why.
HB: The Riot Club culminates in a gore-filled dinner party, but it's the movie's moral depravity that really makes it hard to watch. What was the most difficult scene to film?
DB: The first one that kicked a massive punch in my gut was the scene where Holly Grainger enters the dinner party and gets harassed. While filming that dinner scene, you came away at the end of the day feeling sort of dirty because you were creating this whirlwind of disgustingness throughout the day, improvising and bouncing off of each other. The director, Lone Scherfig, encouraged us to fall in love with our characters and, in order to play them correctly, not judge them. So a horrible atmosphere was created on set intentionally, and the poor girl came in. I remember I went to give Holly a hug at the end of the day, and she literally flinched—"No thanks, Doug," and ran.
HB: What do you think you learned throughout that whole, guttural filming process?
DB: How not to behave at a dinner party.
Romy Oltuski is a writer and editor based in New York. Her work appears in The New York Times, Forbes, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, and The Cut.
