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It takes about 15 milliseconds in the presence of Leo Woodall to clock why he has become the go-to movie boyfriend of his generation. To start with the obvious, there’s the boyish handsomeness, the blue eyes that shimmer like big swimming pools — attributes that have drawn comparisons to the other Leo at his matinee idol peak.

Like the boy-next-door charmers he has portrayed in the likes of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, in which he played the younger muse to Renée Zellweger’s chronically unlucky-in-love lead, or One Day, the Netflix romantic TV epic that must’ve caused a worldwide tissue shortage, he is approachable and thoughtful, prone to occasional long pauses between answers and, sometimes, words. He’s also a proper bloke who swears like a sailor, or at least like any other British guy in his late 20s. “Let’s get pissed,” he jokes, as we settle outside.

Woodall’s latest project is Tuner, a frenetic, Safdie-coded, New York heist thriller in which he stars as a hearing-impaired piano tuner who discovers a knack for cracking safes. He is still kind of playing the movie boyfriend — there’s a prominent romantic subplot in which he falls for Bottoms’ Havana Rose Liu — but it’s the kind of performance that should bust any preconceived notions of who he is as an actor. Ahead, we get into Tuner, his coming role in the Bourdain biopic Tony, why he’s moving away from rom-coms, his love of The Lord of the Rings (though he stays mum on his just-announced role in the upcoming prequel), and resisting self-criticism.