Credit: Top Gun: Maverick
Miles Teller has come a long way since his first role as Jason in Rabbit Hole.
Currently, the actor is on top of the world as Top Gun: Maverick, where Teller plays Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, is the top-grossing film of 2022, garnering a staggering $1.454 billion worldwide. In a world when The Batman has his first solo feature since The Dark Knight Rises (which came out in 2012), Marvel returns with two powerhouse films: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($955.8 million) and Thor: Love and Thunder ($759 million), Maverick managed to beat every popular superhero on the market and unless Black Panther: Wakanda Forever or Avatar: Way of the Water blows the box office numbers past Top Gun: Maverick, then the Tom Cruise sequel will likely take the crown for the biggest film of 2022.
Teller’s career started off slowly like every actor; however, the 35-year-old started gaining prominent roles like Project X and the critically acclaimed indie feature, The Spectacular Now; however, one more really helped skyrocket his career as an A-list leading man; Whiplash. To recall, the 2014 feature is about Andrew Newman, an ambitious jazz drummer who was just accepted into an elite music conservatory. The problem? His teacher is Terence Fletcher, a highly respected instructor who is known for his terrifying teaching methods. Fletcher will push Andrew past the breaking point in order to achieve perfection, which sees Newman spiral into obsession and a mental breakdown just to become one of the best jazz drummers out there.
Credit: Whiplash
Whiplash was the talk of the town in 2014, with the Damien Chazelle vehicle garnering five Oscar nominations: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Achievement in Film Editing, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, Best Motion Picture of the Year, and Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay. Whiplash would leave the awards show with three Oscars. More importantly, it cemented Teller as a leading man. However, in order for Teller to get the role in Whiplash, he had to make a business decision and do the movie adaptation of the Divergent series. The actor went viral for saying that he made the film for “business reasons”. The actor didn’t hide his disdain for the movie at all, venting why he wasn’t happy with Divergent to The Hollywood Reporter and many other outlets, “I didn’t have an interesting part [in Divergent], and I’d taken the film for business reasons: It was the first movie I’d done that was going to have an international audience. I called my agent and said, “This sucks. ‘He told me about Whiplash.”
Unfortunately, the series failed to garner more success at the box office with each film coming out; Allegiant Part 1 made the lowest of the franchise, collecting only $179.2 million. The final film was scrapped and though there were discussions of doing a television movie to finish off the series, Teller and several other actors were against the idea completely.
Credit: Whiplash
Still, Divergent got him Whiplash, and the actor looked back at his process of the Oscar nominee during his interview with Indie Wire and why it’s really a great film, “Not really. I saw it at Jason Blum’s office at Blum House Pictures in a small conference room with my girlfriend and my publicist on a 50-inch TV. It was good, but the first time that you see anything, it’s not a very pleasant experience. You are just so focused on what you’re doing that you’re not watching the whole film because it’s an extremely subjective experience. So yes, I thought it was pretty good, but I was unsure. Once I saw it up at Sundance, playing at the Eccles, and I saw the way the audience responded to it, I was finally able to enjoy the film because it wasn’t my first time seeing it. The response was confirmation that it’s a really great film that stays with people because of the final scene in the movie. That’s so rare nowadays for a film to end with the most powerful scene.”
What’s next for Mr. Teller? The actor was recently cast in The Gorge, a new feature from Scott Derrickson, the director of The Black Phone.
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