For Regé-Jean Page, the British Zimbabwean actor who grabbed the world’s attention as Bridgerton’s first heartthrob, both Hollywood and life itself are all about keeping it simple. “I see my life like a big stir fry,” he says. “You throw all the ingredients in and then you stir that thing down and make it simple. You simplify it until you can see the ingredients again and you can actually isolate the flavors and know what you’re doing.”
Page, who appears on our 2023 Hollywood cover, followed his one-season stint on Bridgerton with Netflix’s hit action film The Gray Man and landed a leading role in the upcoming film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. He’s also rumored to be in the running to be the next James Bond. Read on for excerpts from an interview about the myth of overnight success, leaving Bridgerton, and life inside the Hollywood machine.
Vanity Fair: I heard you were the life of the party at the Hollywood issue cover shoot.
Regé-Jean Page: That’s wonderful to hear. You never want to hear the opposite of that report, like, “It was great except for that guy.” Maybe I was overcompensating because I think I was the last person shot. Everyone had been working super hard for so long and also organizing that many actors cannot be fun for anyone. I spend enough time with our kind to know our flaws, as well as our virtue.
What do you mean by that?
It’s just an awareness of your place in the machine in general. It’s a thing that I try to carry with me. The actors are the piece of equipment that turns up last and fucks up most, basically.
I’m walking into something that has been built before I’m there. It has had love, sweat, tears, and breakdowns before I’ve ever read the script. Once you walk onto that set, you’re walking into a machine that has been running very well without you and you need to fit in seamlessly. You need to not gunk the thing up. It’s not for you. So that was the attitude I brought to the shoot.
Clothing and tie by Burberry; ring (ring finger) by Cartier.PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVEN KLEIN; STYLED BY PATTI WILSON.
What was it like to be thrown into the Hollywood machine and have your life change overnight because of Bridgerton? One day you’re a working actor, and the next day you’re the most handsome man in the world, according to a plastic surgeon who actually researched it somehow.
Allegedly [laughs]. No one’s proven it in a court of law.
Okay, allegedly the most handsome man in the world—and everyone knows your name.
It’s overnight for everyone else. Nothing changes for me. When it’s tough, when no one wants you in the room, when you’ve got to fight to bust down the door—you do the work, you turn up. It works or it doesn’t. When it’s loud and there’s a lot of attention and people are gassing you up with all kinds of things—some are true, some aren’t—same thing: You turn up, you do the work, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The trick is to make sure that you focus on your job as hard as you did when you were struggling to get to do your job.
