I will admit, I’ve been really impressed by Joe Alwyn over the past year. He navigated the Taylor Swift breakup better than any of her other exes (minus Harry Styles) and he came out intact. Taylor has written some songs about him, but he hasn’t come across as a heartbreaker or f–kboy or douchebag. The worst you can say about him, re: Taylor, is that he didn’t want to marry her and he sort of wasted her time. Anyway, Alwyn recently spoke to the Guardian because he’s promoting his new film, The Brutalist. He plays the son/heir of Guy Pearce’s wealthy industrialist, an industrialist who is the “patron” of Adrien Brody’s Holocaust-survivor architect. It’s a supporting role for Alwyn, but given the awards-season surge for The Brutalist, it looks like a great career move for him. Some highlights from the Guardian interview:

Why he signed on to The Brutalist: “To be honest, I thought it might be a really good film that not many people would end up seeing. Who knows, maybe it still will? I hope not. But given the things against it, given that it ticks most boxes of what you’re not meant to make as a film these days: length, content, all of that – anything on top of that is a really nice surprise. A three-and-a-half-hour film about a Hungarian architect doesn’t scream Oppenheimer!”

His entitled and arrogant character: “A bit of a wrong ’un, but quite an interesting wrong ’un,” says Alwyn. He found inspiration for Harry in unexpected places. “Look who’s the new president of America, and his family. Often family businesses are so insular and stunted and hollow. And you see it with Trump and his children: ‘I can do what I want.’ A convicted felon accused of sexual assault and grabbing them by the p-ssy and all of that. He’s unanswerable, unfortunately.”

Scoring his first film role in ‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’: “Everything about it was extreme: going to a new country, going to military boot camp, having your hair shaved off, doing an American accent, bulking up, everything was extreme. It’s still the most special experience of being a part of a project. I feel like I’ve been chasing that feeling since and have also simultaneously realised it’s not going to be the same, because that was the first ever time. And so it’s become coloured by other things and that’s OK as well… that first time I had no idea about everything else that comes with it. That you have to do press for it and there’s expectations, or there’s not expectations. Or it could lead to this, or it won’t lead to this. All of that wasn’t there and that was great.”

Whether he feared that his relationship with Taylor Swift would overshadow his career: “I have tried just to focus on controlling what I can control. And, right from the beginning, tried to focus on the things that are meaningful for me: friends, family, work, of course. So noise outside of that, I think I’ve done what lots of people who find themselves in the public eye do, which is just try and ignore it. If you don’t, and if you let all of that other stuff in, and if it starts to affect you and your behaviour, you’re living from the outside in. And then you’re pretty f–ked. I have great family and friends and real things in my life; those are the things that kept me tethered to the ground. So I don’t know how else to say it, it’s… just in a different room.”

He has moved on from Taylor: “That’s something for other people to do. We’re talking about something that’s a while ago now in my life. So that’s for other people. That’s what I feel.”

[From The Guardian]

I like this perspective: “it’s… just in a different room.” That’s probably one of the healthiest ways to handle it. He never even seemed that worried that he would get the full “Taylor’s Ex” treatment by Taylor or her fans. It was like water off a duck’s back, or noise in a different room, as he says. It’s got to feel good that following the split, he’s been in two acclaimed art-house films back-to-back as well – first Kinds of Kindness and now The Brutalist. He also just filmed with Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone again. He’s really fashioning an interesting career for himself.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.