JOHN BOYEGA - awesome new cover man for GQ (posted July 17, 2017) -- asking Robert Downey Jr. for advice on life and love, mid-waffle:
“...How does a 25-year-old actor come to have that kind of perspective? Because he knows he doesn't have all the answers and is confident enough to go looking for them.
At Robert Downey Jr.'s house. Over waffles. (RDJ didn't make them himself, Boyega says, but he did “orchestrate the making of the waffles.”)
It was just before Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened in theaters. “It was time for me to sit down with someone who's been through the extremes of Hollywood,” Boyega says, “and to be given some tips as to how to stay stable.”
Boyega asked his agent at the time if he could ask Robert Downey Jr.'s agent if Downey wouldn't mind briefly filling Boyega in on how to just, like, be famous correctly. How to not become so overwhelmed by attention that, as RDJ briefly did, you squander your talent and get busted for heroin, rendering yourself unemployable. Boyega was hoping to skip to the part where you maintain a healthy relationship with your own ego and ambition, so that you're able to make fulfilling and lucrative creative decisions, as RDJ currently does.
Sure, that's kind of embarrassing to ask about, but how else would you find out?
Then suddenly, mid-waffle, Orlando Bloom dropped by. Just unannounced, like it was a regular thing. “I'm not used to any of that stuff, hanging out with Iron Man on a day-to-day basis,” Boyega says now. “I was just like, ‘Bloody hell. Is this how the celebrities do?’”
It was the best-case scenario for someone seeking a crash course in fame. He's getting advice from one of the most famous actors in the world, someone who, against all odds, has wound up solid and sane, and suddenly a second one shows up.
So while Boyega had the opportunity, there was something kind of crazy he wanted to ask these huge celebrities about.
“Women. Women, women, women,” Boyega said. But this wasn't some gross thing where a nascent star asks reformed hounds how to assemble a Pussy Posse. It was more gentlemanly than that. He was asking a man seemingly in a blissful marriage (Downey) and one of the dudes who inspired Katy Perry's latest album (Bloom) about relationships.
“My mom and dad have been together for 25 years, so that's the system I will follow,” Boyega says. On the other hand, his parents met in Nigeria, immigrated to South London, and brought up three children in a small apartment while making a modest living preaching and aiding the disabled. Boyega knows that's not going to be his life.
So, how do you find that kind of partnership when you're famous enough to casually arrange a mentorship with Robert Downey Jr.? Boyega is borderline wistful as he imagines this ideal woman, equally comfortable in Peckham and Hollywood, going through tough times and dancing on red carpets.
“It's nice to survive with your companion by your side. I'm sure it's a good thing,” he says. “But I've never experienced it. And people advise you as a celebrity, ‘Make sure you get someone who doesn't care about your career.’ Mmmm…I disagree,” Boyega told Downey and Bloom.
They concurred: “She has to care about it to understand it.”
