Thanks to our amazing Justin Timberlake affiliate, World of Justin, for finding this exclusive Alex Pettyfer interview from February.

In Andrew Niccol’s new dystopian movie Now, you can stay young forever — but only if you can afford the extra years. In our exclusive interview with I Am Number Four star Alex Pettyfer, he told us a little bit more about playing the villain in this futuristic epic.

Pettyfer’s character, Fortis, is constantly chasing after main character Will (Justin Timberlake) who he thinks has wrongfully stolen his precious years.

If the years of someone’s life is the new brand of currency in Now, how old is your character?

Seventy-five. There are no old people. When you get to 25 you stop aging, and you have a clock [points to his inner left wrist] and when you hit 25 you get a year of your life. And you can [gain or lose] that year, so you can end up with a million years or you can end up zero years. But when you get to zero, you die.

It starts off with out lead character who has 23 hours [left to live] on his clock left. And he runs into a million-year-ian, who has a million years. He gives Will the million years, and I see that and I think it’s mine, and I go after him. I’m the bad guy.

Do you have a lot of years left?

I have a couple of months left on my clock, which isn’t a lot.

What was your favorite part of filming a movie in the future?

Everything — from the cars to the guns, to the outfits.

When Pettyfer was pointing to his wrist we assumed he was indicating where the timer was located on each future human. So we searched recent set pics looking for a few wrist pieces, sadly it looks like in the future people want to keep their death clocks secret. All the girls surrounding Timberlake seem to have their left wrist covered up.

Source: io9

ALEX PETTYFER IS GETTING USED TO BEING IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA. ON THE BRINK OF SUPERSTARDOM, FASHION’S NEWEST BAD BOY SHOWS THAT KEEPING IT LIGHT IS HOW TO STAY SANE WHEN EVERY LENS IN HOLLYWOOD IS POINTED AT YOU
Alex Pettyfer is still posing in front of Mario Testino’s camera at a studio on the outskirts of Paris when his publicist pulls me outside for a quick chat. She wants to know if I have read Pettyfer’s Wikipedia page, which I have not, but of course I tell her that I have. It’s all wrong, she tells me, and I shouldn’t even bother. So, as soon as she walks away, I pull it up on my Blackberry.

What I find there turns out to be inaccurate but harmless: Pettyfer was not approached by Ralph Lauren at a toy store when he was a little boy and made into a baby supermodel; while he did appear in two Burberry campaigns, he was never a model aspirant; and—my personal favorite, because it’s so ridiculously random— his family is not best friends with Channing Tatum’s. Beyond the Wikipedia entries, however, I see that in the weeks leading up to our photo shoot quite a few less-than-flattering posts about Pettyfer have shown up on the gossip blogs. That’s why, when our shoot wraps and we grab a couple of cheeseburgers at a hotel near the Place Vendôme, the first thing we talk about is his online reputation.

“I think my Wikipedia is full of bullshit because I actually don’t have anything cool or interesting to be said about me,” the 21-year-old Pettyfer explains. I ask if he wants to add the word “yet” to the end of that statement, but he declines. “I’ve heard I’m called a bad boy, or difficult—maybe that’s because I don’t take any bullshit.”

Here’s the thing about Alex Pettyfer: apart from some films he made before he was old enough to drive, and unlike other child actors, there isn’t a preexisting narrative on the future Hollywood heartthrob. Today, Pettyfer finds himself a relative unknown on the brink of stardom, a blank canvas on which anyone can project a scandalous backstory.

A magazine or a Web site can say whatever it likes about Pettyfer right now, because there isn’t an online search to say otherwise. He’s amused by the gossip machines that fuel L.A. (a city he has a few strong opinions about, but we’ll get to that later), particularly since he lives soberly and sedately in Tinseltown, where TV stars on drug and prostitute benders only get more famous with every arrest. For the record, he tells me, “I don’t go out, I don’t drink, and I don’t do drugs.” I think he’s being honest: here in Paris, when I drag Pettyfer from Katy Perry’s backstage dressing room to the vodka- and champagne-soaked VIP section of Louis Vuitton’s Fall show, he politely declines to imbibe any spirits. He’s a bad boy with good manners, a rare species in the film industry.

Let’s go back to the beginning: Alexander Richard Pettyfer, the son of an actor father and an interior decorator mother, was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, a quaint town in the English countryside. (Apart from Pettyfer, the other big name to come out of Stevenage is that of Formula One racing champion Lewis Hamilton.) When he was 11, he moved to a place called Isher, and then a few years later, the family relocated to Windsor, where the Pettyfers still reside.

When he was 13 years old, Pettyfer’s school took a field trip to the I-TV television studios in London, where they happened to be holding auditions for Tom Brown’s School Days, a made-for-TV movie starring Stephen Frye. The casting director spotted Pettyfer, asked if he’d audition, and eventually gave him the title role. In the wake of that film, Pettyfer found himself moving to L.A., getting an American agent, and spending five months securing the lead role in the film Alex Rider: Storm Rider, released by Weinstein Productions in 2006.

After that film, Pettyfer admits, he became a little disillusioned with the acting game. “I don’t think it was for me at that age,” he explains. “I felt like the industry was just a factory. You hear a lot of people say they want to make art in this industry, but so few people actually fucking do it. I was disillusioned by [Hollywood] at the time, but now I’ve come to accept that’s just the way things are: it’s called show business, not show art.”

On his break from acting, he took a few lengthy sojourns through Europe, and to help finance them, booked two modeling gigs with Burberry. In 2009, he returned to L.A., quickly landed the title role of Kyle in Beastly, the remake of the fairy tale classic “Beauty and the Beast.” Next up was the lead role as a superpowered alien in I Am Number Four, opposite Glee actress (and then-girlfriend) Dianna Agron. How does he explain pocketing two leads in feature films so quickly? “I’m a very lucky boy to be at the right place at the right timel,” he says, his handsome, chiseled face opening into a smile.

An alien with a heart of gold and a good-natured beast who finds love—easy fare for a handsome up-and-comer. But Pettyfer wanted to try something different for his next role, so in this fall’s Now—a drama based on a future world in which humans stop aging at 25, then use time as a currency to extend their lives—he plays a villain. “This bad guy is an insane nutcase, but so intriguing and charismatic. A crazy motherfucker who can literally turn on someone on a dime. He doesn’t give a fuck, and he has all these twitches.” It’s rougher stuff than Disney redux, and there’s even a rape scene with Justin Timberlake.

Pettyfer based the madness of his character on Charles Manson, but made him clean-cut. “I like classically twisted, so he’s in a Tom Ford suit, his hair is slicked back, and he’s supremely intelligent.” He already had some requisite bad-guy tattoos: among them a cross on his chest, a black ring on his finger, Arabic writing on his arm, the phrase “What Goes Around Comes Around” on his shoulder, and, as you can partly see in these pictures, the phrase “Thank you” on his lower abdomen—“In case I forget to say it,” he winks, by way of explanation.

Pettyfer is happy his career is taking off, but on the downside, he says, living in Los Angeles sucks: “I’m going to slag off L.A. so badly, and you’re going to write every word, and it’s going to be so fucking funny.” Well, he’s right about that!

“L.A. is growing on me a little bit, but it’s still a shit-hole. I think it’s this insidious pool where nearly everyone lives in fear.” Is there any saving grace to living in Southern California? “Geographically it’s fantastic: in a half hour, you can be on the beach in one direction, go snowboarding in another, or go out into the desert. But socially it’s disgusting. I wish they’d just run all the cunts out.” He doesn’t even like those A-list red-carpet events. “I really don’t give a shit about any of that. I wish I had some interesting stories [about living in L.A.], but to be honest I mostly just do my work and then go home.”

Newfound fame isn’t Pettyfer’s favorite thing. He grimaces with disgust when he recalls being chased into an In-N-Out Burger by paparazzi. He says he now prefers to stay at home with his two dogs, a pit bull and a French bulldog. But he does have an exit strategy: “Being an actor in L.A. is like being in prison: you go, you serve your time, you try to replicate Johnny Depp’s career—and then you move to Paris.”

Source: VMan

Alex went into the BBC News studio to discuss his latest role in Beastly.

Head over to the BBC website to watch the interview, which begins at 13:31.

Alex Pettyfer came into the GLAMOUR.com offices to answer your questions live on Twitter. Find out what the gorgeous British actor had to say about working with Vanessa Hudgens in his new movie Beastly, who his celebrity crush is and about playing Jace Wayland.

Question: Who’s your celebrity crush? (by @AmyAndPhilippa)
Alex: Rihanna

Q: Why does he think Hollywood is currently obsessed with reworking fairytales? (by @sharonforrester)
A: People love seeing things that they can relate to in a new light!

Q: Do you have a Twitter? If so, what is it? Because there are about five Alex Pettyfer’s on Twitter. (by @bhxc4life)
A: I’m sorry I’m not on Twitter. This is my [first] tweet experience!

Q: Which of your tattoos did you get first? (by @TeamPettyfer)
A: My cross

Q: Are you going to play Jace Wayland in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones? (by @ShadowGirl_)
A: Love the books. I can’t tell you anymore than that at the moment.

Q: Do you prefer to play the good guy or bad guy in movies? (by @jenniferNxJaceW)
A: I prefer to play the bad guy – it gives you more freedom as an actor.

Q: What is your ultimate dream role to be able to play? (by @jenniferNxJaceW)
A: James Hunt

Q: Who would you like to work with and who did you love working with? [sic] (by @NarroAna)
A: I liked working with Stephen Fry

Q: Which is your favorite band? (by @Andrew_Garfield)
A: The Police

Q: Did you get to do any awesome stunts in a film? (by @Jennifer_Henley)
A: I did the backflip off a waterfall in I Am Number Four.

Q: If you could live in another period of time, which would it be? (by @gabylafara)
A: The 1960s. It was a more peaceful time. And the music was amazing.

Q: Do you have any guilty pleasures? (by @xLightwood)
A: Jersey Shore.

Q: [In] one of your interviews, you said you were scared of horror movies. Are you still scared? (by @jenniferNxJaceW)
A: Yeah a little bit.

Q: What do you do when you are not filming? (by @karymartinez)
A: I read. My favourite books are Charles Bukowski’s Post Office and Women.

Q: Do you get nervous on red carpets or do you like them? (by @_eleanorxo)
A: I get very nervous.

Q: Have u ever thought of performing in a theatre? (by @maggiegogler )
A: I’m too scared to perform onstage. I’m not very good with big crowds.

Q: Do you happen to support a Uk football team, if so, what is it? (by @Jennifer_Henley)
A: Arsenal.

Q: Alex how does it feel to work with Vanessa in Beastly? (by @IHeartHillary)
A: It was a great experience.