\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my breakfast,\u201d Drew Starkey<\/strong> proclaims as a plate of medium-rare steak and potatoes gets placed in front of him, a near-empty cup of black coffee to its side. He woke up at noon, coming off of a late-night screening of his new movie Queer<\/em>, for his final day in Toronto. It\u2019s the last meal the 30-year-old star will have before he flies home, taking a pause from the glamorous fall-festival circuit<\/a>. He\u2019s just walked the same Venice red carpet as Angelina Jolie<\/strong> and Nicole Kidman;<\/strong> he\u2019s newly swept up into the A24 family. Things are moving fast. As he searches for a fork, it\u2019s natural to wonder how he\u2019s taking it all in.<\/p>\n The answer to that is hardly simple, in part because Starkey\u2019s been on a journey of introspection since he was cast in Queer<\/em> well over a year ago. An adaptation of William S. Burroughs\u2019s semi-autobiographical 1985 novel, the film directed by Luca Guadagnino<\/strong> takes an elliptical approach<\/a> to the story of a slippery romance between two men in mid-century Mexico City. Lee (Daniel Craig<\/strong>) becomes infatuated with a beautiful, enigmatic younger man named Allerton (Starkey), whose sexual proclivities prove maddeningly difficult to read. They become intimate\u2014as captured by Guadagnino in explicit, passionate detail\u2014and eventually travel both around South America and into the depths of their own subconscious (via a trippy ayahuasca sequence). One piece of dialogue, spoken at different points by both of them, haunts their courtship: \u201cI\u2019m not queer, I\u2019m disembodied.\u201d<\/p>\n Starkey references the line at one point over our meal. A feeling of disembodiment rushed up in him about as soon as he finished production on Queer,<\/em> one of many reasons he\u2019s still processing the film\u2019s impact on him. Its professional impact may be clearer: The star of Netflix\u2019s Outer Banks<\/em> and teen films like Love, Simon<\/em> reintroduces himself here with a rich, complex, and brave performance that ought to open new doors. But as we chat, he sounds more interested in the personal doors Allerton may have introduced him to.<\/p>\n At the film\u2019s Toronto premiere the night before our interview, Starkey revealed on stage that Guadagnino first described Allerton to him as a \u201cnasty bitch.\u201d Naturally, we began there.<\/p>\n