To many he is generally known as the Rafe Cameron, the teenager villain with a powerful redemption arc in Netflix’s pandemic hit Outer Banks.
However Drew Starkey is leaving his teen heartthrob self behind (though we’re certain his OG followers will stick round), now set to develop into a bona fide film star – and it is all thanks to at least one Hollywood’s most recognisable faces.
It was none aside from James Bond himself, Daniel Craig, who helped to safe Starkey’s place a rising star.
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Starkey and Craig star collectively in Luca Guadagnino’s tragic romance, Queer.
Starkey performs Eugene Allerton, a discharged American navyman who turns into the youthful ?object of Craig’s character Lee’s obsession.
When an audition tape of Starkey’s – made for an unrelated venture – got here throughout Guadagnino’s desk, the director had a intestine intuition he was the proper particular person for the position, and his suspicions have been confirmed when he ran the thought by Craig.
After watching the tape, the Knives Out star shared three easy phrases along with his director that not solely secured Starkey’s position within the movie, but in addition his trajectory to stardom.
“That is the man,” Craig informed Guadagnino.
So, Starkey’s identify was added to the decision sheet of a director identified to skyrocket up-and-coming actors to new heights of fame (Guadagino was additionally the person behind Timothee Chalamet’s breakout position in Name Me By Your Identify, in addition to field workplace hit Challengers, which noticed Zendaya’s identify pop up in awards season chatter for the primary time).
Whereas he could also be a brand new face to some, many can have that eerie feeling when watching the movie, sure they’ve seen Starkey someplace earlier than however simply not capable of put their finger on it.
Drew Starkey’s life rising up – and the teenager heartthrob he at all times associated to
?Rising up in Hickory, North Carolina, it appeared Starkey’s life was already laid out for him.
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His mum was a ?college counsellor and his dad a profession school basketball coach, who now leads the ladies’s staff at Kent State Faculty.
“I bought a bit of little bit of Troy Bolton in me,” Starkey informed Individuals, likening the life-defining determination he needed to make at a younger age – basketball or theatre? – to the one confronted by Zac Efron’s character in Excessive Faculty Musical.
The Outer Banks star began theatre round 9 or 10 years previous, telling Pop Culturalist his household was “very musical”.
“[My] grandpa was an opera singer. He was on Broadway within the late fifties. My uncle began an opera home in Asheville, North Carolina,” he stated.
He started neighborhood theatre as a child, then when he bought to highschool it was his theatre instructor, Molly Rice, who helped persuade him to pursue it as a profession. ?
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Starkey informed W Journal that deep down he’d at all times identified his true ardour was in theatre, however “it felt like a secret”.
“?I beloved being onstage,” he shared.
“After I was 19, a instructor informed me that I ought to do that with my life. And I used to be like, oh…”
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So, then got here the day Troy Bolton himself dreaded: sharing that he actually was a theatre child, not the jock folks had believed him to be.
?”Basketball was my past love,” Starkey informed Individuals, including that regardless of all of it, he could not resist the pull to theatre.
“I used to be like, ‘No, Dad, I wish to sing and dance, , I am meant to be an actor’,” he shared.
“Generally you’ll be able to hit a move the place it appears like, ‘That is what I am meant to be doing’, and it is second nature.”
So, after highschool Starkey enrolled in Western Carolina College the place he studied English and ?theatre, joking to Esquire that it was “good to have an English diploma as a fallback”.
After commencement he packed up and ?left North Carolina, shifting right down to Atlanta, the place two mates of his had began a manufacturing firm.
From there, he tells GQ he began “auditioning like a f—ing madman”.
From teen heartthrob to bonafide film star
“The primary job I booked was on a Fox tv present,” Starkey informed W Journal.
“I performed a punk-ass child who will get pulled over by the cops. It was the primary time I used to be on set, and I used to be like, ‘Oh my god’!
“That day, I wanted there was a tour information. Nobody explains it to you. I believe I used to be too nervous to eat.”
The star kicked his profession off by “simply saying sure to all the things”, telling GQ he “felt like a one-man travelling present” driving all throughout the south for small roles on TV, quick movies, scholar movies, something he might get his identify hooked up too.
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?Whereas ready for his huge break, Starkey waited tables to assist pay the payments, working tirelessly in hopes of someday ‘making it’.
He managed to attain small roles in huge tasks some are capable of pinpoint his face from, together with reveals like Ozark? and movies Love, Simon and The Hate U Give.
Ultimately he packed up and left Atlanta for the intense lights of Hollywood. However it wasn’t lengthy after he moved to LA ?that he bought a telephone name asking him to maneuver again down south.
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“They referred to as and stated, ‘Can you progress out to Charleston and shoot for the subsequent 5, six months?'” he remembered of the day he was provided the position of Rafe Cameron on Outer Banks.
“I used to be like holy s—, sure. I would at all times contributed to a bit of sliver of tales, proper? By no means been a part of the massive image.
“And in order that was actually thrilling. It is all I wished. I used to be like, I wish to be there from the start to finish and be a part of the method.”
So, in the course of 2019, Starkey packed up and made his technique to South Carolina, the place he spent the subsequent 5 years starring on one of many largest teen dramas of the previous decade.
“?I believe it is some lifestyle, telling me that the South remains to be my dwelling and I am type of meant to be there,” he informed W Journal.
Years after this huge break, after Guadagnino confirmed Starkey’s unrelated audition tape to Craig to substantiate his suspicions this was certainly the proper man for the position of ?Eugene Allerton, the director reached out to the younger star to ask him to breakfast.
“I used to be like, ‘what the f—?'” Starkey informed GQ, explaining his confusion stemmed from the truth that not solely had he not despatched Guadagnino an audition tape, however there was “no manner” the Oscar-nominated director had seen Outer Banks.
“We talked about our lives, we talked concerning the climate, and we talked about Los Angeles,” Starkey informed The Hollywood Reporter of their first assembly.
“And he introduced up this venture that he is been engaged on and requested if I might put a couple of scenes on tape.”
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He went dwelling and ordered a replica of William S. Burrough’s novel Queer – the supply materials for Guadagnino’s movie – and browse it in a day.
Then, a couple of months later, he bought the decision. Eugene Allerton was his. ?
He did not meet Craig till the desk learn in New York, the place Starkey stated he in a short time realised they have been going to work effectively collectively.
“I preferred Drew from the second I met him,” Craig informed GQ.
“He is such an exquisite, type human being, and that was very apparent to me from the very begin.”
However there have been two issues Craig and Guadagnino had in frequent: One, they’d by no means seen, or actually had any information of, Outer Banks, and two, they’d no thought of the die-hard fanbase Starkey had grown from his time on the present.
Guadagnino informed GQ that, humble as ever, Starkey hadn’t informed him or Craig something of his involvement within the Netflix hit.
“I found that Drew made [Outer Banks] and was a celeb the day during which, leaving the studios after a day of labor, I noticed a thick crowd of followers holding banners along with his identify in entrance of the gates, screaming, ‘Drew, Drew, Drew!'”
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