Interview: Michael Cera

All teenagers have a style icon, someone they seek to emulate in matters of sartorial dash, and Michael Cera, the 19-year-old star of US high-school comedy smash Superbad is no different.

"I first saw Curb Your Enthusiasm when I was 16," explains Cera, "and Larry David was the first character in a long time I really connected with! I even started dressing like him, you know, slacks and sneakers? I feel comfortable wearing clothes that don't tell people 'Hey, I'm gonna... be hip!' Since I was 15 I've felt kinda like... an old man."

If all you know of Cera is his quizzical face looming down from Superbad posters, or that the film is the latest comedy from the makers of The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, it might seem odd that Hollywood's latest hot teen property would take fashion tips from a socially inept 60-year-old Jewish comic.

However, those familiar with the Canadian actor's compellingly strange presence in Fox TV's short-lived cracked-family cult comedy Arrested Development, have known for some time that Michael Cera is not like other child stars. Cera's performance as George-Michael Bluth - the perturbed innocent in a family of maniacs - was a masterclass in adolescent awkwardness wholly removed from the world of the stage school Hollywood teen. As such, it comes as a relief to find that in person, Cera retains a healthy dose of on-screen strangeness. As he sits upright in the window-chair of his London hotel room, he is polite and funny but there are flashes of Arrested Development's cervine wariness in his brown eyes. Sporting a tomato-red cardigan, checked shirt, pale slacks, light sneakers and a woolly hat pulled tight over his dirty-blond mop of hair - offset by an over-the-shoulder bandolero filled with rolls of 35mm film - in the world of teen cool, Cera is striking in his unconcealed ordinariness.

"People would see right through me if I presented myself any other way," he insists. "If I wore a..." he pauses to think of an outlandish item, "If I wore a denim jacket, people would just think I was this huge phoney!"

Born in 1988 in Brampton, a nearly-city just outside of Toronto, Cera started on the acting road at the age of four after watching Bill Murray in Ghostbusters ("I just wanted to be like him. He was the coolest guy in the world!"). Rather than go the happy-clappy stage school route Cera took weekend children's improv classes in Ontario and auditioned fruitlessly for hundreds of Canadian commercials before landing a breakthrough character role in Canadian kids TV series, I Was A 6th Grade Alien. "Auditioning for adverts was really discouraging," he admits. "You had to be really hammy and over the top. There were kids who made a living doing that, and it was always the same kids. I eventually asked my mum if we could stop going."

Although acting was clearly in his blood, Cera seems to be one of the few child actors who accrued melancholic depth during his apprentice years, as opposed to the usual brash arrogance.

In 2001 he sent in an audition tape for a Fox sitcom called The Grubbs, a US remake of our own 1970s-set Brummie sitcom, The Grimleys. More lessons in dejection followed when the show was cancelled after eight episodes, without ever being aired. Cera's role in The Grubbs led to an audition for Arrested Development but Cera was so "devastated" by the cancellation, he remained sceptical of the new show ever seeing the light of day. Instead he quietly observed the comic skills of the show's co-stars, particularly US stand-up David Cross. "I watched [Cross' late-90s HBO sketch show] Mr Show when I was 12 years old," he enthuses. "I really idolised him."

The natural comic timing accrued by Cera on Arrested Development gives Superbad an air of undeniable adolescent melancholy. The deceptively dumb tale of three high school geeks Seth, Evan and Fogell (Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse) on an epic mission to provide alcohol for a graduation party, Superbad was written by Knocked Up star Seth Rogen and writer/director Evan Goldberg when they were in high school in Vancouver. Produced by Knocked Up writer/director Judd Apatow and directed by Greg Mottola it's another ribald-meets-rueful romantic comedy from the collective who've ironically tagged themselves the Jew-Tang Clan. Given that Evan is but a more human twist on the tragically neurotic George-Michael Bluth, Cera was surely a shoe-in for the role. Nope.

"Maybe if Arrested Development had been a hit," he says, "but it never was. Actually, Evan (Goldberg) had seen Arrested Development once and specifically stopped watching because of me. He said 'I specifically didn't like it because of you.' It was a gruelling audition process."

Now that Cera does have a success under his belt he's aware that, as a teen actor, the next thing the Hollywood Handbook says he should do is lose it all in a fog of drugs and booze before ending up in rehab at the age of 21. Unsurprisingly, this holds little appeal.

"Most people my age don't live like that," he says.

In all honesty, however, Cera has had little to do with most people his age. Does he feel he missed out on all that youthful camaraderie?

"Somewhat, I guess," he says, sceptically, "but I got the gist. The thing is, I really can't relate to anyone my own age. Not in a superior way, an inferior way if anything. Socially, I have no idea what my friends are talking about. I don't listen to any new music. I feel very secluded." He smiles a warm beaming smile. "It's a nice feeling."

One person Cera can relate to is fellow young actor Clark Duke, an LA neighbour with whom he wrote the Clark And Michael mockumentary which follows the duo's deluded attempts to write and sell a pilot for a TV series. Originally planned for US adult comedy channel Adult Swim, it was finally made as a dot-comedy for CBS, an experience Cera remains unsure about. "The internet seems like such a step down," he says. "We had a lot of fights with CBS. I'm very happy with the show but the experience left a bad taste in mine and Clark's mouths."

However, despite Cera's internet ambivalence, the web is where some of his best performances can be found, genius fragments of sociological satire that perfectly illustrate the young actor's blissful seclusion from the world of Hollywood self-promotion [see sidebar]. "Well, yeah, I never was good at that," he deadpans. "I have difficulty in excelling."

Cera's undercutting of American stereotypes will continue with his role as an awkward track star/young father in Jason Reitman's comedy drama Juno but Cera is most excited about his upcoming role as cynical, sex-obsessed teenager Nick Twisp in the movie adaptation of CD Payne's blackly comic picaresque, Youth In Revolt.

"I love that book!" says Cera. "People criticise it because it's so obviously written by a 50-year-old man. It's the world view of cynical old man inside this kid. But that's perfect because that's exactly like me!"

Taking the Michael: Four YouTube moments of Cera's anti-cool surrealism

1. Impossible Is The Opposite Of Possible
A parody of the over-ambitious job application video made by Yale University's Aleksey Vayner, which became one of the early YouTube hits. A perfect example of Cera's skill with a comedy prop.

2. Knocked Up audition
Cera is endearingly unconvincing as he pretends to lose it with director Judd Apatow in this eerily accurate skit of David O Russell's blow-up on the set of I Heart Huckabees.

3. Sweet Tits
Cera lampoons the LA club scene, playing the world's most unconvincing club bouncer in this foul-mouthed guest spot for Derek Walters and Simon Helberg's online sitcom at the Super Deluxe online comedy channel.

4. Clark and Michael. Life After the Show
Cera and Duke discuss the success they've had following their internet show, ineptly attempting to hide their sadness, loneliness and dependency on booze. A brilliantly bleak encapsulation of LA loneliness.

· Superbad is out now

· This article was amended on Friday September 14 2007. Seth Rogen's surname was misspelt as "Rogan" in the above article. This has been corrected.