Miles Teller on his well-earned douchebag reputation: I know who I am

“Thank You For Your Service” Premiere

Here are some photos of Miles Teller at the LA premiere for Thank You For Your Service, a film about soldiers/veteran returning home and PTSD and all of that (the film was released this weekend). Miles posed with the cast, and with his fiance Keleigh Sperry. Whenever I write about Miles, I’m reminded of several things all at once, mostly that he’s a fratty douchebag in real life, but he’s one of the most “watchable” of the younger actors. I’m not saying he’s a great actor (yet), but he has “presence” and a watchable quality on-screen, and that’s something that can’t be taught. For the record, I do think he can act too. He just hasn’t found his niche or a defining role.

One of the reasons why I know Miles Teller is a douchebag in real life is because several years back, he gave a series of increasingly douchey interviews, the peak-douche of which was his now-infamous Esquire cover profile. As Miles tries to promote his latest film, people are still bringing up that Esquire profile and his fratty-douche reputation. This is Miles Teller trying to defend himself:

On the fact that a lot of people think he’s a douchebag: “Look, I don’t have Instagram and I’m not blowing up Twitter and I’ve still gotten cast in a bunch of great projects. I absolutely know actors that have been cast in things because they have a big social-media following but I don’t know — certain people expect that if you’re an actor in your 20s that you should be glad-hand-y and smiley and all that sh-t. Maybe some people have been turned off of me because I take what I’m doing pretty seriously and I don’t feel the need to charm everybody. So, do I think of acting as a popularity contest? No. Was it tough for me when that Esquire article came out? It was.

How was the Esquire article tough? “If how that story made me look was how I really was, I’d think I was the biggest douchebag too. The main idea in that story was that Miles Teller doesn’t give a rat’s ass what you think of him. That’s really not true. I absolutely do care what people think about me. But I can’t put much weight into whether the public likes me because the more important thing is that, as an actor, I can truly say that there’s not a single director or actor who I’ve worked with who’d have a bad thing to say about me. I’ve never missed a day of work. I’ve never not known a line. So I feel good about where I am.

Whether he felt introspective after the Esquire profile: “If you really let that kind of thing get to you, man, it’ll get stuck in your head. And when I put my head to my pillow at night, I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I honestly felt like I was behaving like an a–hole to people. I know the kind of brother I am. I know the kind of son I am. I’ve had the same friends since I was 14, 15. I’ve been with the same girl for four-and-a-half years. I have a dog. I know who I am, and it’s not who I was in that story.

[From Vulture]

It’s funny that his reaction to “you come across really poorly in print interviews” is “I have a girlfriend and a dog!!!” To be clear: coming across poorly in interviews is not the worst crime. Most of Miles’ coworkers and costars think he’s a nice, hard-working guy, just kind of a frat boy. I also think he took himself way too seriously when he first started getting some heat, and he probably lacked the self-awareness to know that it was bad form to endlessly sh-t talk. My point? I don’t know. I think he’s still the same old douchebag, but he’s just gotten better about censoring himself in interviews.

“Thank You For Your Service” Premiere

Photos courtesy of WENN.

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