Identified by the Los Angeles Times as one of the stars to watch this summer, 20-year-old Anton Yelchin has landed plumb roles in two of the most-anticipated fanboy flicks of the season. He plays freedom fighter Kyle Reese in Terminator Salvation and Pavel Chekov in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot.
Reacting to his new-found fame in an interview with the Times, Yelchin says he got "really lucky," and emphasizes his sense of responsibility in "capturing what people appreciate about the characters." But in both cases he is taking on the characters at an earlier stage in their lives than audiences have been seen before. This gives him a certain amount of creative latitude. "There are different paths to the same person," he observes.
As an actual Russian -- he's from what used to be known as Leningrad -- he approaches playing Trek's Chekov with a certain sense of irony:
With Chekov, it was fun to capture the comedic aspects.... Naturally, he's kind of funny sometimes. I adjusted it, but I wanted to be close to the [original version]. Certain things I took: the V's to the W's. He says wessels. He doesn't say the V, which is an odd choice. It's the kind of choice that they made 40 years ago when he was this Cold War stereotype. But it's fine. It's great.
For his role as a younger incarnation of Michael Biehn's rage-filled Kyle Reese, Yelchin says he drew on some fellow middle-class San Fernando Valley residents: observing how they overreact when they're younger, before they gain self-control -- leadership, vulnerability, and anger all mixed up together.
The paparazzi aren't beating down Yelchin's door, yet. But after the pair of blockbuster role out this May, they may well be.