A large part of Ansel Elgort‘s life is simply trying not to be a douchebag.
“I don’t walk around calling attention to myself,” Elgort, 23, told Billboard in an interview released Thursday. “It’s important to be able to blend in; otherwise you turn into a Hollywood douchebag. I’m sure plenty of people think I am one, too. I’m super easy to hate. But it’s fine. It’s hard to be liked and successful.”
The “Baby Driver” star also uses the douchebag risk factor for his real estate purchases. He told the magazine that he purchased his 1890 Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone instead of buying “someplace douchey.”
“My parents always told me, ‘The second you can afford to buy a place, buy a place,’” said Elgort, son of fashion photographer Arthur Elgort and opera director Grethe Barrett Holby. “My whole life, I lived in an apartment where I couldn’t bounce a ball without getting into trouble. Now I can bounce a ball! I’m so happy I have my dream place now.”
Elgort pointed out that he’ll only dine at non-douchey eateries, taking writer Rebecca Milzoff and his girlfriend, Violetta Komyshan, to Le Pain Quotidien in Greenwich Village.
“It’s extremely solid. Some people are like, ‘You’re from New York, have you been to, like, insert-five-really-douchey-places?’ I haven’t been to any of those places,” Elgort boasted. “I like my solid places.”
Despite the actor, singer and erstwhile DJ’s judgmental attitude toward anything he deems “douchey,” Elgort gets defensive if the term (or others like it) is used to describe anyone close to him, including EDM duo The Chainsmokers, who received flak for their “bro-y” nature after a Rolling Stone interview painted them as cads.
“It’s a prime example of how success makes everyone hate you if you’re not underground … And I’ve also been there,” he said. “It becomes a meme to hate somebody. But don’t be like, ‘They seem like they’re so bro-y.’ They were never trying to fool anyone into thinking they weren’t bro-y. Sorry if I sound heated. It’s just so easy to be a hater.”