Blond, English and frequently shirtless, Alex Pettyfer is Holly-wood’s latest It Guy.
While his alien-on-Earth romantic thriller “I Am Number Four” stalled at the box office, Pettyfer opens this week in “Beastly.” He’s also reportedly being pursued for a couple of high-profile fantasy franchises as well as the new Lee Daniels (“Precious”) drama.
“Yeah, man, I’m just very lucky, ” he said.
Luck or not, that’s a lot of pressure — how does he handle it?
“You just relax and watch telly or eat dinner or whatever. That’s what you need to do as an actor,” Pettyfer said.
“I commute from England to L.A., and when I’m in L.A. I focus 100 percent on work and when I go home I don’t have anything to do with work. You can go a little insane with this job,” said the fan of bungee jumping, white-water rafting and rock climbing.
In “Beastly,” an update of “Beauty and the Beast,” he plays arrogant rich kid Kyle Kingson, who has some big life lessons in store.
“People like stories they recognize but they like it changed-up. It’s only been told through a woman’s eyes, where ‘Beastly’ is through my eyes as the beast. You go on this adventure with him, with his loneliness and struggle, and you’ve never been on this side.”
He considers this his most demanding role, “It was physical but not in the sense you’d consider.”With 53 days of filming, “I’d be in a makeup chair for seven and a half hours. It was five and a half hours of makeup, then an hour and a half off. Seventy-five pieces glued on to you every day is crazy.”
That was after he shaved his head.
“That helped me with my character. When you’ve got an image you’ve had for many years and destroy that, you take yourself out of a comfort zone.”
Pettyfer, who turns 21 next month, has been acting since he was 14, and left school at 16.
“A lot of guys my age are still in university and I’m given an opportunity to experience the world and travel and meet different people, which is very liberating.”
Still, thoughts of college are on the back burner.
“You can always revisit it. I think while I’m going on this weird adventure I’ll give it a miss for now. But yeah, if it goes pear-shaped I’ll go back to school.”
(“Beastly” opens Friday.)
