The pressure to capitalize on his Hollywood moment and throw himself into anything was never Drew Starkey’s style.

“I’m not a good multitasker at all,” Starkey says. “I like to concentrate on one thing. A lot of my colleagues are really good at juggling a lot of different things at once, and I’m like, ‘How do you do that?'” he adds.

“It’s nice to put almost all of your energy into something and really experience it fully. That’s the only way I can work, and that’s how I like to work.”

Since August, the 31-year-old has been focusing on “Queer,” his new film starring Daniel Craig, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville and Omar Apollo. The project, which reunites director Luca Guadagnino with his “Challengers” screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes and costume designer Jonathan Anderson (of Loewe), is based on the 1985 book by William S. Burroughs and follows an American expat living in the 1950s For years in Mexico City, his relationship was with a younger man who was new to the city.

Starkey’s world tour for “Queer” began with the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival, with stops at various other film festivals, premieres and Loewe’s show at Paris Fashion Week (he is a new face of the brand alongside Craig). It’s a big undertaking for the actor, who has managed to largely stay out of the spotlight for several years despite his star status.

“I was a little nervous going into it that I wasn’t going to make it,” he says. “Attention and a lot of people can easily get overstimulated, but it was nice to have Luca, Daniel and Jonathan and all these great people. The fact that we were together the whole time made it really, really easy and really fun.”

After one of the busiest periods of his career, he has come to this experience with a new sense of clarity. After finishing “Queer” last year, he headed straight to Charleston to film “Outer Banks,” only to be shut down by the SAG strike a few days later.

“It was the first time I’d really had a long break, and I was like, ‘I don’t know who I am.’ I did a lot of soul searching this year and found ways to feel a little more comfortable and not tied to work,” he says.

This included a week and a half of solo backpacking in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks and a renewed focus on journaling.

“I’m a person who really needs to give myself time for solitude – it’s a reminder of, ‘Oh yeah, there’s external communication that I need to be a little more attuned to,'” he says. “I sometimes get so caught up in a creative process that I need to talk to myself more.”

His role in “Queer” as a mysterious, quiet young man named Eugene Allerton first came to mind when his agents told him Guadagnino was interested in meeting for breakfast.

“I thought, ‘What the hell?'” he says. “And then I sent out a few auditions and we talked about it for a few months. It was organic. I have never experienced a process like this before. I just had the feeling that I got to know Luca and he got to know me.”

Viewers who know Starkey from “Outer Banks,” in which his character Rafe frequently screams, starts a fight and takes a drink, will need a moment to recognize him as Allerton: shy, soft-spoken, more physical than vocal .

“It’s like a puzzle that you can’t quite solve. You think you’ve figured it out and you realize you’re missing something,” Starkey says. “He’s so different than anyone I’ve ever played. The opportunity to train a different muscle was really cool.”

Initial discussions about the character’s development were held closely with Anderson, who was set to cast Starkey in a Loewe campaign last fall.

“Sometimes you get a character and it’s very specific about who that person is and what world they live in, and then you start adding physical things. That was different,” Starkey says of Allerton. “I started by physically forming the image of this person that I had in my head, and then that kind of influenced the rest. It’s a really cool way to prepare and work. Working with Jonathan was also an essential part: he had very clear ideas about what he wanted. Both he and Luca really understand the psychology behind clothing.”

“Drew is incredibly collaborative to work with,” says Anderson. “He has this innate curiosity that I think is very rare for an actor.”

Aside from Allerton, Craig was already attached to the project – an obviously attractive but frightening sell.

“I was nervous when I met Luca. I was nervous about meeting Daniel. I was nervous about meeting Lesley Manville and Jason Schwartzman and everyone else,” he says. “But Daniel definitely did, just because I was like, ‘I hope he likes me.’ This goes away very quickly because Daniel is so open and warm and willing to share his insecurities and fears with you.”

“Drew shows signs of maturity far beyond his years,” Craig writes of Starkey. “What he has is that magic that great actors have – the ability to live, to be present and to show what he’s made of.”

At this moment in Starkey’s life, he’d be hard-pressed to find a better example than Craig of how to balance life in the public eye while making his own career rules.

“There’s something basically punk about Daniel, especially in a time where everyone is under the microscope and everything is projected into the world, every little thing you do. But he couldn’t care less what people think of him, and it’s simple, but it’s such a good memory. His mentality is, “Who cares?” he says. “That kind of mentality: ‘Fuck it, screw it.’ I took that away from him. And that’s how I feel too. But I think the more you get into the public eye and stuff, the more you start to think about it.”

His praise for Craig as open and warm-hearted can easily be turned around on him. Starkey is disarming and easy to talk to. He pauses mid-conversation to explain the interruption of the chimes on his bird clock: a gift from a friend in honor of the bird clock his grandmother used to have. It’s easy to understand why his “Outer Banks” co-star Chase Stokes agreed to help him move shortly after meeting him, and why “Queer” co-star Apollo called meeting him “a huge relief.” describes.

Maybe it’s the small-town upbringing: Starkey grew up in North Carolina and was introduced to the performing arts as a child through the Asheville scene: his uncle was the creative director of the Asheville Lyric Opera, and Starkey’s family would also see each other Theater productions in the city. Around the age of 11, he tried to act in a school play, “and I think he got the itch,” he says. He continued school theater through high school, but always viewed it as a means of expression, nothing more.

“When I played at North Carolina, there was no goal,” he says. When a drama teacher in a minor class at Western Carolina University took him aside and told him that this was something he had to do in his life, it was the first time he considered the profession as a career option.

“No one had ever told me that before. I didn’t know what an agent was,” he says. “I didn’t know how it worked. Being in films felt so out of reach.”

Everything changed for Starkey when he was cast as Rafe Cameron in Outer Banks, which became an instant phenomenon since it premiered on Netflix in April 2020 (and with it, his character Rafe was revealed to be the bad boy from which… the fans can’t get enough). ). The first two seasons were released in the middle of the pandemic, so the show’s actors didn’t really feel their newfound star power until a few seasons in. Guadagnino said he had never seen “Outer Banks” but met Starkey through a test tape sent to him by another filmmaker.

“Honestly, deep in my heart I believe Drew is a generational talent. And I think he’s really someone who takes his craft seriously in a way that’s very reminiscent of actors of yesteryear,” says Stokes. “We’ve heard Daniel talk about Drew and Luca talk about Drew, so it’s really nice to know that in my heart and then hear it from people who are doing it at the highest level, who have been doing it for so long. He’s just such a lovely actor. He’s not a loner. He constantly thinks about the bigger picture. And he is someone who cares incredibly about the entire process. And it’s so fascinating to watch him work.”

It was announced earlier this fall that Outer Banks would be ending next season, opening up Starkey’s career just in time to ride the post-Queer wave. And while this could easily be seen as a major transition point for the actor, he tries not to focus too much on the moment.

“Who knows? I sometimes feel like it’s a bit of an illusion, but yeah, I’m very lucky that I’ve been able to dip my toes into completely different things and I really hope I can continue to do that,” he says . “I hope people continue to give me opportunities to do that.”