how noah centineo became the internet's boyfriend

It is a very, very good time to be Noah Centineo.

His appearances in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and Sierra Burgess Is A Loser have seen him ascend from supporting TV star to Netflix’s most prized asset in less than 12 months, during which time he was also anointed the Internet’s Boyfriend.

Noah's meteoric rise means that little is known about his past or the triumphs and failures that have littered his path to success, though. Not only has it been quite the journey, but the 22-year-old star harbours a fierce ambition to make sure that this is only the beginning.

On a recent sunny Saturday afternoon in Beverly Hills, Noah opened up to i-D about his big plans for his future, his trials and tribulations in Hollywood, and his latest Netflix rom-com, The Perfect Date, which is destined to make the world fall in love with him all over again.

How did growing up in Florida shape and impact you?
Maybe if my parents were from Florida it would have. Both my parents were pretty transient. My pops, though he grew up in Brooklyn and moved to Florida in his late 20s, he still adopted this nomadic lifestyle and vagabond mentality. My mom was born in America and before she turned one she moved to Australia. She lived there until she was 13 or so and then came to America and went down to Florida when she was older. They’re pretty wanderlusty. So growing up with them, that defined me much more as a human than any location did. Even in Florida I kept moving around a lot. Then I lived in Utah for a year and back to Florida and then I moved to LA at 15, and this is the longest I have been in a state.

When did you realise you wanted to act?
Keanu Reeves in The Matrix was my first role model when it came to acting. I’m not entirely sure when acting became this uncontrollable passion. I don't think it ever quite reached that point. I act, but I also want to do a lot of other things. Acting was always something that I enjoyed doing. It was a catharsis. Still can be a catharsis depending on the role. And it's been something that has been lucrative and that has allowed me to pay for a place to live. I've been so privileged, so fortunate and blessed to have found it and to have been rewarded by it as a career.

You’ve rose to prominence in rom-coms. Do you want to do more?
For the rest of 2019 and half of 2020, depending on the schedule for the sequel for To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, I am going to be in that genre. Then in Charlie's Angels I play the love interest. It's a little bit different, which is cool. There’s an action part to it as well. I think that genre is something that I'm going to be married to for a while. I don't mind that. I like it. I really do thoroughly enjoy it. I just only hope that in moving forward with commitments that I can balance it with other sorts of projects.

You are primarily associated with Netflix. Do you want to work with different studios?
Absolutely. Netflix is buying and making so much content, giving so many people jobs. With Charlie's Angels, that's just an example, because I worked with Netflix now I am working with Sony. Hopefully that relationship cultivates and it grows beyond just Charlie's Angels. I want to work with other studios. I just think that Netflix is so dynamic, though. They’re global. They’re imperial. They’ve taken over this industry. It’s just progress. People are like, ‘It has to stop!’ It’s like, ‘Yo, man, you try to stop it.’ They should be trying to get on board and work with us.

In The Perfect Date , Brooks is a character that struggles to find his voice. Was that something you have struggled with?
I still struggle to find parts of my voice. I struggled a lot with that when I was younger. It's empowering and also peculiar that after so long of struggling to find that voice I finally have this idea of where I want to go and what I want to do and have this purpose. It makes my life a lot more difficult. Because now I know I have to do so much work to achieve that. I almost wish I was still ignorant. I almost wish that I didn't realise now what I wanted to do. I'm still figuring it all out. But we know inside, internally, what we want from life. In the past year what I’ve been trying to do really made a lot more sense to me. Ever since I got sober actually. Honestly. That was huge.

Why did you make the decision to get sober?
I realised that any decision I had ever made and regretted was done under the influence of something. I was really regretting those decisions. And I thought, ‘I haven’t [gone longer than] four days without smoking a J or drinking or experimenting with a drug since I was 15. Why? I am about to turn 21. Why am I so upset that I'm turning to these crutches?’ I didn't do rehab. I didn't feel like it was necessary. I went to an AA meeting and it was really, really grounding and opened my eyes to the severity of addiction. But then after that I thought, ‘I definitely want to take a break from everything and see how I do without it.’ I did that and it opened my eyes.

The Perfect Date will be on Netflix on April 12.