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Getting to know: ‘The Boy Next Door’ star Ryan Guzman – Metro US

Getting to know: ‘The Boy Next Door’ star Ryan Guzman

Fans of “Pretty Little Liars” and the “Step Up” films are already familiar with Ryan Guzman, but with this weekend’s “The Boy Next Door,” a lot more people are going to get a look at Guzman — and at a lot more of him. Here’s an introduction.

He’s not tired of cookies — yet:
“Everybody wants to know about the cookies,” Guzman says, citing a stand-out line from the trailer. “As I came into New York, a couple of fans were waiting with cookies in hand. So I plan on getting as many cookies as I possibly can while the oven is still running, I guess.”

He’s heard how audiences react to the film:
“So far, I’ve heard someone yell, ‘Replay!’ after the intimate sex scene.”

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He’s sorry for freaking anyone out in real life:
“People get extremely scared by Noah Sandborn, so much so that when they see me in real life, they look at me a little differently. Until they actually start talking to me and realize that I’m just harmless little Ryan Guzman, there’s a lot of people that are a little standoff-ish at first.”

He knows where to look for inspiration:
“I definitely have plenty of actors that I look up to, like Marlon Brando or Tom Hardy, Christian Bale. And Mark Wahlberg, his business savvy and how he came up. I actually used Mark Wahlberg’s ‘Fear’ performance as something to base Noah Sandborn on in the beginning.”

He’s had auditions that he’s totally botched:
“I’ve had so many of those — and I know every actors had those — where you go into the casting room and you do your thing, and in the middle of the scene you’re in your own head and thinking too much and you go, ‘Crap. I’m not getting this role.’ I’ve learned to use it to my advantage. If I’m in the middle of a scene and I don’t feel like I’m getting it, I throw my own little flair on it and have fun with it. It’s crazy, it ends up working and they call me back just because I did something weird.”

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He knows his limitations:
“The one thing I struggle with, if I’m being honest, is being the romantic hero — the protagonist that’s lovey-dovey and says all the right things. I have the hardest time with those. I don’t look at myself, Ryan Guzman, as a guy who can get any woman he wants or says all the right things. I look at myself as an idiot. I look at myself as a goofball, man.”

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Here’s the last thing he Googled:
“The last thing I Googled was actually the definition of translucent, which is kind of weird out of context. I was writing something at the time. I do short stories and poetry and scripts and whatnot. That’s why I ended up looking that up.”

Where you’ll see him next? As Rio in “Jem and the Holograms”:
“Rio in the film is kind of the up-and-coming Rio. He thinks he has everything in order and knows what he wants, but then throughout the film you find out that he has no clue. And hopefully you like my singing. It’s the first time I ever tried. I was more terrified about that than getting naked in front of the camera, let’s just say that.”

Follow Ned Ehrbar on Twitter:@nedrick