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ALDEN
EHRENREICH
The Hottest Character Actor

He’s been called the new Cary Grant and the
next Leonardo DiCaprio, but make no mistake:
this 28-year-old New Yorker is only interested
in being…Alden Ehrenreich, the character actor
with leading man looks who disappears inside
each of his roles. “To me what’s really important
is not to show off in a role or to be the biggest
star, but to help tell a good story. I simply want
to be another color in the canvas,” he says with
passion.
That’s because Alden is part of the exciting
nouvelle vague of young Hollywood actors—
among them Kristen Stewart, Josh Hutcherson,
and Shailene Woodley—who reject artifice and
reluctantly embrace stardom in the hope that it
will allow them to tell real, more authentic stories.
“I want to make films that tell people something
of value. Some movies only give you superficial
or stupid ideas. I try to stay away from that,”
says the star of some excellent movies that few
have seen: Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, brothers
Joel and Ethan Cohen’s Hail, Caesar!; and War-
ren Beatty’s love letter to Howard Hughes, Rules
Do Not Apply, alongside Lily Collins.
Of course, all of this will change with the release
in May 2018 of Han Solo: A Star Wars Story,
where Alden plays one of film’s most iconic roles.
What did he feel when offered the opportunity
to recreate the role that Harrison Ford made
famous in the 70s? “Everything is so surreal that
at some point you stop expecting it to feel real,”
admits the Star Wars fan who collected the film’s
action figures when he was a kid. As a matter of
fact, when his mother found out that he had won
the role of young Han Solo, she shipped the whole
collection to him in Los Angeles.
Intensely private, Alden doesn’t give up many
details of his personal life, and he keeps signif-
icant other’s name private. But he does confess
to being an incurable romantic. “I don’t know if
it’s destined or not, but I certainly couldn’t imagine
I’d be the person that I am today without the
romantic experiences that I’ve had,” he confesses.
With the upcoming release of Han Solo: A Star
Wars Story, it’s a sure bet Ehrenreich’s career
will take off like a mega-rocket, but he prefers
to take things lightly. “I’ve been in movies where
JEFFREY MAYER/WIREIMAGE movie star.’ I’ve learned that you can never predict
they’ve told me: ‘After this, you’ll be the biggest

these things,” he muses philosophically. “At the
end of the day, my goal is not to be a star but
to make something real that endures.”

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