TikTok star Noah Beck is ready for his close-up.

The 23-year-old former football player makes his acting debut in director Justin Wu’s Sidelined: The QB and Me. He stars in the teen romance “Tubi” as high school quarterback heartthrob Drayton alongside Siena Agudong (TV series “Resident Evil”), who loves his dancer Dallas. The film is based on the Wattpad YA novel “The QB Bad Boy and Me” by Tay Marley.

“When the idea of ​​acting floated in my head, I thought for a long time: ‘I want to do that.’ And I liked the idea of ​​starting from scratch and not really knowing much about the space,” Beck tells me. “I was constantly looking for more and wanted to do something creatively that felt bigger than me and was collaborative. And I think acting, the industry and cinema do just that.”

Beck’s social media stardom rose to prominence about four years ago. He now has 32.9 million followers (with 2.5 billion likes) and 8 million followers on Instagram.

I first met Beck about a year ago at the GQ Men of the Year party in Los Angeles. “I think my next big goal is to move from the small screen to the big screen,” he said at the time.

Not only did he start taking acting classes, but he also started reading scripts. “I felt like I was starting this social media thing where I was like, ‘Where do I go from here?’ What are you doing next?’ And I think the last thing I wanted to do was just keep myself in that box,” Beck says. “And I thought, ‘Why not? When the opportunity presents itself, why shouldn’t I try to say yes to everything that comes my way?'”

However, Beck, who is also a producer of “Sidelined,” is neither ready nor thinking about leaving social media behind. “I never want to neglect TikTok because it’s really made me who I am as a person, but secondly, professionally, I wouldn’t be here without TikTok,” he said. “I owe a lot of my success to that and I enjoy it. It’s not really a job, you know what I mean? It’s part of life that while it pays the bills, it’s been very kind to me, but I think I still enjoy it. As long as I still enjoy it, I’ll continue to post about it and be active and in the meantime hopefully continue to make films if they have me.”

Beck admits that his entry into acting will be met with criticism. “People can be cruel and evil for no reason,” he says. “I don’t think I have a bone in my body that wants to be problematic. Honestly, peace has been my mantra for the past few years. I am a much happier person when I have good morals, when I do things that make me feel good and make others around me feel good. So I know that these things that are said online, whether they get toxic or anything like that, don’t affect me personally because… they don’t know me.”

He continues: “When this film comes out, there will be people who will have something to say, but I’m proud of the project and I’m so happy with everything that’s in it.”

James Van Der Beek plays Beck’s father in Sidelined. Beck remembers the day Van Der Beek revealed in People magazine in early November that he was suffering from colon cancer. “It was heartbreaking,” Beck says. “I texted him straight away and said, ‘I’m at a loss for words, but you know I’m here for you.'”

Not long after, Van Der Beek attended the premiere of “Sidelined” in Los Angeles. “When I saw him for the first time, I got goosebumps because the journey was amazing,” says Beck. “And for him to sit through the whole movie and share a moment with him afterwards was pretty amazing.”