A Stormtrooper lay in the sand, sealed in the white plastic shell of a uniform better suited for a climate-controlled area: like, say, a Death Star. This particular Stormtrooper had defected and crashed on the desert planet Jakku. It was the fiercely shielded first shot of the fiercely hyped first teaser of the fiercely anticipated first Star Wars movie in a decade, so no one without a Disney contract knew who or where this Stormtrooper was as he fought to get off the dusty ground of what was actually Abu Dhabi. The story behind that image in the The Force Awakens was less fierce, more…awkward.

“Every time I'd move, the plastic would pinch my armpits,” the Stormtrooper says a few years later, reminiscing in his South London apartment as he removes the Indiana Jones hat he's been inexplicably wearing indoors, exposing the neat high fade atop his dense five-foot-nine frame. “I'd rolled onto my bum, pushed up with my arms, then got onto my knees, struggling to get my thighs up. The sand was moving, and it was a struggle. I was out of breath. It was hot as hell. But I got my back up. And then I came into shot.”

The Stormtroopers had been No One until The Force Awakens. Unnamed. Rarely heard. Then the Stormtrooper removed his helmet and became John Boyega.

“I thought they were going to keep Stormtroopers taking helmets off a mystery for a while,” Boyega says. “I thought they were going to hold that back, but they put you bang right in the middle of the narrative.”

The face we were seeing held warm deep-set eyes darting around the desert while sweat dripped down his forehead. Lips parted to reveal clenched teeth. It was all very human—and he seemed convincingly terrified. Boyega's talent was so obvious that you see him on the screen and think, Yeah, that guy belongs here. When he took off the helmet, Boyega became part of Hollywood's next wave, a swell that would carry him through Kathryn Bigelow's new film, Detroit, out this month, and nudge him into the top tier of leading men. And, yeah, onto the cover of GQ.

Pants, $895, by Ralph Lauren / Trench, $1,795, by Burberry / Tie, $60, by Tommy Hilfiger / Shoes by Church's.

But the moment we—the world—realized Boyega was going to be a star was not the same moment when he realized it. That took longer. And you can actually YouTube the exact second he got it. On the red carpet of the 2015 London premiere of The Force Awakens, a reporter asked him how he felt. Boyega looked shocked as he yelled, seemingly without permission from his brain, and definitely not from his publicist, “I'm a boy from Peckham”—a mostly immigrant, mostly working-class district of South London—“and I'm in a Star Wars movie!”

Boyega turned to the 15 hometown friends he'd brought on the red carpet with him. “We gotta get a camera to my people!” he said. Boyega beckoned the lens with both arms and walked over to his people with the smile of someone who suddenly realized this was the coolest thing ever. His friends draped their arms over him, and the whole scrum of Peckhamites danced. His arms started pumping, ending in pointed fingers, then fists, then palms turned upward to take in the glory of the moment.

This is the kind of thing you never see. An expression of genuine happiness at a contractually obligated, highly stage-managed professional function. (Just try to imagine a young Ryan Gosling or Anne Hathaway being moved to spontaneous dance on a red carpet.) But it doesn't feel arrogant—closer to an offering of gratitude to the forces that brought him there.

Two years after that premiere, we're in his flat playing Nintendo before heading to the Old Vic theater for a performance of Woyzeck, an adaptation of the Georg Buchner play that Boyega is starring in. I marvel at how momentous that premiere was. It must have just felt like everything had changed, all at once—he was a star! Eyes fixed on the Mario Kart race that he is about to win, Boyega very politely corrects me, the boy from Peckham putting everything in perspective:

“Star Wars will always be the star of Star Wars.”

How does a 25-year-old actor come to have that kind of perspective? Because he knows he doesn't have all the answers and is confident enough to go looking for them.

At Robert Downey Jr.'s house. Over waffles. (RDJ didn't make them himself, Boyega says, but he did “orchestrate the making of the waffles.”)

It was just before Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened in theaters. “It was time for me to sit down with someone who's been through the extremes of Hollywood,” Boyega says, “and to be given some tips as to how to stay stable.” Boyega asked his agent at the time if he could ask Robert Downey Jr.'s agent if Downey wouldn't mind briefly filling Boyega in on how to just, like, be famous correctly. How to not become so overwhelmed by attention that, as RDJ briefly did, you squander your talent and get busted for heroin, rendering yourself unemployable. Boyega was hoping to skip to the part where you maintain a healthy relationship with your own ego and ambition, so that you're able to make fulfilling and lucrative creative decisions, as RDJ currently does. Sure, that's kind of embarrassing to ask about, but how else would you find out?