When Kevin Feige sat down with Vanity Fair in his office for a lengthy chat about the last 10 years and the future of Marvel Studios, he was wearing a long-sleeve black polo, a pair of simple jeans, some sneakers, and a black ball cap emblazoned with the Thor: Ragnarok logo. It’s not an unusual uniform for a director or even the occasional studio head, but what’s different about Feige is he wore the exact same clothing, with the simple addition of a blazer, to the glitzy Hollywood premiere of Thor later that same night. As one of his stars, Chris Hemsworth, notes, this is one of the more endearing, down-to-earth qualities of one of the most powerful men in the industry: “The fact that he’ll still have his baseball cap and his sneakers on and a sports jacket thrown over a Marvel or Disney T-shirt. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he’s just another fanboy.”

That fanboy—who lives in a Pacific Palisades mansion that’s casual, by mansion standards, with his wife of nearly 10 years, Caitlin, and their two kids, Ella and Erik—has worked hard to maintain an air of normalcy, even as his films continue to grow and dominate the globe. (Caitlin Feige, for example, keeps renewing her nursing certification for whenever she wants to return to work.) In the interest of delving deeper into this particular Hollywood outlier, we’ve put together an expanded version of our conversation with Feige, and supplemented it with observations about the studio chief from some of the people who know him best: his Marvel family. Feige started the interview by pointing out a strange, new accessory in the corner of his office—a light-up chair that was a prop from Thor: Ragnarok—and then proceeded to start fake snoring when he, not his movies, became the center of attention.

Vanity Fair: If you could just talk to me a little bit about where you grew up, and when . . .

Kevin Feige: [gentle fake snoring] Born in Boston. I moved to New Jersey when I was three. Lived there until I was 18 and moved here to go to U.S.C. to make movies, which is all I ever wanted to do.

The Russos called you a “content sponge.” When you grew up, you weren’t just into comic books—it was everything?

Comics were not high on there, actually. It was the kind of movies based on comics—like [Richard] Donner’s Superman. Later, when I was 16, Tim Burton’s Batman came out. But also the Star Wars movies, the Star Trek movies, the Indiana Jones movies, the Back to the Future movies, the Amblin movies. They all could have been based on comics. Those were the types of movies I loved. I always say: “I was at the movie theater on Friday, but I only occasionally went to the comic-book shop on Wednesdays—which was new comic book day.” X-Men was very big at that point. The X-Men comic was very popular, and the other kids would talk about that. So I got into that, and then the animated series came along, which we all remember. But it really was movies and television.

What kind of kid were you? When you went to the movies every Friday night, did you have a whole group of film-loving friends with you?

Yeah. I don’t know if they identified as film lovers, necessarily, but we just would go. I remember the first R-rated movie I saw, which was St. Elmo’s Fire, produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, who I have worked for. I remember them all. I saved ticket stubs. Just as nerdy as you can get. I got so excited the first time I saw the T.H.X. logo in front of The Abyss in ’89 or something. I would drive much further than I had to, to go to the theater that had the sound system I wanted to see the movie— just, you know, a stereotypical film nerd.