Douglas Booth has a problem. He is much too good-looking. He won’t say so for fear of sounding ridiculous. But yes, he admits, being handsome has its drawbacks. ‘That’s the biggest reason I don’t get parts. People say, “He’s too leading man, too this and that.”’
It’s not the worst problem in the world: to be 23, all cheekbones, teeth and olive-grove tan topped with a swoosh of hair direct from a L’Oréal ad. It’s served Douglas well up to now, playing the lead in Romeo And Juliet and, more recently, as convincing posh totty in The Riot Club.
He’s at it again in his next film, the ludicrous-as-it-sounds Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, in which he plays the dashing Mr Bingley.
Pride And Prejudice And Zombies is more than a slight reworking of Austen’s classic. Based on the best-selling book, the film sets itself up as a corset affair packed to the gills with hot Brit Pack talent (Lily James, Matt Smith, Sam Riley) before introducing a zombie plague to the old will-they-won’t-they Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy storyline. When the zombies attack, it’s Austen’s women who take up arms. Mr Bingley, meanwhile, sits on the sidelines looking pretty. ‘He’s not great in a zombie situation,’ Douglas admits, ‘but thank God the women are so brilliant.’
If dashing leading men have become Douglas’s stock-in-trade, he broke into acting playing a very different kind of frontman. Born in Greenwich, son of a painter (his mum, Vivien) and financier (dad, Simon), he joined the National Youth Theatre in his teens and an acting agency at 15. But it was his uncanny take on a young Boy George in BBC drama *Worried About The Boy *that catapulted him into the spotlight. For Douglas it represented a chance to transform and show what he was capable of outside of the pretty-boy niche.
For his next role, Douglas undergoes another physical transformation. He plays a Victorian musical performer and murder suspect in the gothic thriller The Limehouse Golem. ‘Let me show you what I look like,’ Douglas says, showing us snaps of himself with tombstone teeth, a boxer’s chin and ghastly haircut. ‘That was an amazing opportunity to just lose myself,’ he smiles. ‘It was as fulfilling as playing Boy George, having the ability to transform myself.’
But while good looks present their challenges in acting, there are upsides to be had elsewhere. As Douglas shot to fame as an actor in 2010, he also became a face of Burberry. Asked the most fashion thing he’s ever done and the stories start coming: that time he was flown to Beijing for a Burberry show and ended up in a hotel bathtub with seven of the world’s biggest supermodels (he claims everyone was fully clothed); his first Met Ball, walking arm-in-arm up the red carpet with a then relatively unknown Cara Delevingne, to whom the photographers shouted: ‘Oi! Attractive couple!’ to get their attention.
But perhaps most glamorous of all is Douglas’s tale of a Met Ball after-party. ‘Madonna had just walked in. Sarah Jessica Parker wasn’t getting in. Jay Z was waiting in the street. It was chaos,’ he relates. ‘I pulled up with Mario Testino, Cara and Jourdan Dunn. Mario just pulled me in. I was waiting in the porch for Cara and Jourdan, and Anna Wintour was also standing there. I said, “Whose party is this?” It was hers,’ he sighs, ‘but she took it quite well.’
‘Pride And Prejudice And Zombies’ is in cinemas now