Basketball keeps my feet on the ground
ANSEL ELGORT plays the heartthrob at the centre of the year’s biggest movie weepie.
But he’s more than just eye candy for the one million-plus Twitter fans who follow his every move and the throng of young teens who have greeted him at every public event he has made in the UK.
He plays Augustus opposite Shailene Woodley’s Hazel Grace in The Fault In Our Stars, which has been a box office sensation in the U.S. and looks set for similar success here.
The film’s based on John Green’s best-selling novel about 16-year-old Hazel Grace, who has thyroid cancer, and fellow teen Augustus, who has bone cancer.
‘It’s about two people who become best friends, and they have sex because they love each other on a friendship level’, he said. ‘They don’t just have sex.’ Ansel, 20, says some adults have been patronising about such a union.
‘They go: “This isn’t the real thing. When you get older you’ll know what love is.”
‘But just because you’re younger, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a meaningful relationship.’
This film certainly is moving and Ansel and Shailene burn up the screen.
The pair played siblings in Divergent before filming The Fault In Our Stars. After our chat, he hopped back to the U.S. to film Insurgent, the second of four instalments in the Divergent science fiction series.
But he doesn’t just belong to the big screen. He studied ballet and dance, has been in an off-Broadway play and in musicals at high school.
He plays piano, guitar and composes electronic dance music in his Brooklyn apartment. ‘It takes months to make a really good record,’ he says. ‘You bounce around and dance as you’re making it to check it has rhythm,’ said the actor.
‘I don’t really party and I don’t do drugs. Luckily I have other interests, like the music and basketball. I play basketball with my friends every day.
‘The people who get into trouble are those who don’t have other interests outside of acting, so in their downtime they have nothing to do.’
One thing’s for sure, Ansel Elgort is going to be a star that won’t fade any time soon.