Gucci shirt, Prada pants, Cartier watch, Tiffany & Co bracelet, Pyrrha ring.
I can’t prove it, but I think—I think—I may have prompted the Internet’s Boyfriend to post the first picture of his girlfriend, Alexis Ren, to Instagram. The announcement of sorts ricocheted out, sending Noah Centineo’s sizable crush army into an immediate state of mourning.
I solemnly apologize for my role in this tragedy.
Here’s what happened: We were talking as we walked to a bookstore in downtown LA after hanging out at a hotel bar. We were jumping from topic to topic—Centineo is an intrepid conversationalist—and he started mentioning the girlfriend more and more. It was totally natural, nothing weird. His voice, soft as denim but husky with a cold, uttered her name once, then again, the way one does when a newish relationship (10 months) is cementing into something real, something a person would be remiss to leave out. How they met, how they both speak in the same “dialect,” how they both love "Shiloh Dynasty" (a mysterious singer sampled on countless lo-fi hip hop tracks), how she first mentioned her love of Shiloh when they first met while hiking with friends. And that was it. He wasn’t looking for a relationship at the time, but he had to follow this through.
Calvin Klein tank top, Michael Kors Collection sweater, Rolex watch, Pyrrha ring.
It was sweet. I didn’t think much of it. Just a dude with more than 17.5 million Instagram followers talking about his girlfriend on the way to the bookstore.
But then!
Well, actually, before we get to the post of said girl, who planted her tongue on said dude’s face, let’s back up.
Centineo, 23, is slugging back an apple cider vinegar shot to nurse a cold. But that notwithstanding, he looks clear-eyed and well-kept at the hotel bar, sporting the kind of dirty-clean look that is a polished study of rough-and-tumble masculinity: a long-sleeved black Harley-Davidson shirt and baggy skater pants, but a well-moisturized face and clean fingernails. Centineo, who started as a model at age eight growing up in Miami, knows the power of an image: “Modeling is not just taking pictures,” he says. “I consider it an art form.”
His rough-soft look is catnip to his fan base—not that he over-posts on social media, or posts much at all. Centineo claims to have no overriding philosophy on social platforms, other than to lackadaisically engage. “I post pictures when I have them. … I’m not arranging photo shoots or anything like that.”
He’s an actor first, and a thirst trap second. And yet the cute Instagram guy is at a crossroads: Does he let us in a little more, or does he remain the shirtless, smiling heartthrob he has helped create in his 256 (so far) posts?
Joseph jacket, top and pants, Louis Vuitton necklace, Pyrrha ring, The Elder Statesman socks, Converse shoes.
Most of his followers found their IBF through the romantic teen juggernaut To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, which Netflix, famously cagey about revealing actual viewing numbers, has singled out as one of its “most viewed original films ever with strong repeat viewing.” Indeed, after its release, Centineo’s follower count soared from below one million to more than 13 million (and has steadily climbed since), fed on a steady diet of red-meat shots (rippling abs in his Calvin Klein ads), along with bro hangs and nature chills. He’s almost always either explosively grinning or gazing right at you.
Yes, you, anonymous girl in North Dakota.
In To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Centineo plays protagonist Lara Jean’s fake boyfriend-turned-real boyfriend, Peter Kavinsky, the kind of sporty nice guy who pretends to have no idea everyone is in love with him—shy girls, mean girls, and fashun gay boys alike. Properly recognized as pitch-perfect Gen-Z slumber-party fare, the film has graduated to a franchise, with sequel P.S. I Still Love You dropping on the streaming giant on February 12. Rounding out the trilogy, Always and Forever, Lara Jean is in postproduction and slated for release sometime later this year.
So far, everything Centineo has done on-screen has been cute and innocent. Outside of teen fare, audiences have seen him play only a few minutes of hot geekiness in Charlie’s Angels, still squarely in adorable mode. But his passage through the superhero gauntlet is coming. For the Masters of the Universe, Centineo, in preparation to play He-Man, bulked up 30 pounds of muscle last year (eating 11 eggs for breakfast on the regular), only to then shed the weight because production pushed filming back to this summer.
His sister Taylor, only 18 months older than Centineo, can attest to the range of her brother’s personality that so far has gone unseen. “I know people often see this cool, calm, collected guy, but he’s actually insane. Like I’ll come home and he’ll randomly start moving and squawking like he’s been possessed by Jim Carrey. Or he’ll wait until it’s quiet and then out of nowhere, he’ll just banshee scream.” Eventually, this unpredictable energy has to make its way to the screen, along with what Taylor calls his “vulnerable side. He’s really intelligent and really emotional, and I think he’ll start to tackle roles that prove to be a bit darker than what people are used to.”
Further crossing that invisible line between teen- and adulthood, Centineo shaved off his shaggy hair. Because he felt he finally could. He had become famous enough that a risky haircut and nixing one of his most gratuitous assets wouldn’t tank his career prospects. In the process, he revealed a crescent-moon scar at his hairline—the result of nothing more than a trampoline accident when he was six, as it turns out. In person, on a young man with a buzz cut and a touch of tough guy (even if a scrubbed-clean version) to his style, it looks like a wound from a bar brawl.
“Some people in my life think that I’ve kind of shifted into a more masculine brooding type,” Centineo acknowledges in his low-key drawl. “They treat me differently. People are more intimidated.” Then he reconsiders. “Maybe not intimidated but … a little timid. The buzz cut guy with scars on his face is a little different than, like, long-hair cute boy.”
Is it frustrating to have a bunch of strangers care so very much? (Typical comment out of the literally tens of thousands of comments on his buzz cut shots: “Where the F*** did your adorable hair go!!!?”) Is this the kind of fame he wanted when he went to all those auditions as a 14-year-old, flying into L.A. from Miami for a couple months, barely getting a callback?
Fame, celebrity—“I never, ever say it, those words,” he almost whispers, cringing. When Centineo is embarrassed or uneasy, he has this habit of divesting his attention, very subtly but noticeably. His eyes scan the room, dotted with a few others. No one seems to recognize him, and later, when we walk out on the busy streets of downtown L.A., no one does then either.
Brunello Cucinelli jacket and pants, Celine button down top and tank top, Valentino belt, Eli Halili necklace, Pyrrha ring, Rolex watch, Tiffany& Co bracelet.
Not that he minds being noticed. “It’s more of a blessing than a curse. But ask me again in five years when maybe I’m boxed into it and can’t get out. If that’s my path, I might have a different answer for you, but at this point in time, I’m trying to enjoy every single moment of it.”
Michael Fimognari, the director of P.S. I Still Love You and cinematographer for the original, says that Centineo has become a friend over their three or so years of building the TATB universe. Centineo, Fimognari says, has the grounding of someone who’s already been at this a long time. When he was 17, freshly fired from a chic Venice eatery (he was a food runner and lasted three shifts), he booked his first recurring gig on The Fosters, an ensemble drama that resulted in his first steady paycheck.
For those of you wondering what happens in the third installment of To All the Boys, Fimognari offers this about Kavinsky: “There’s a growth to the character and the way that Noah explores that and the way that he involves his other cast members.” Vague, yes, but that’s spoiler culture for you.
Valentino top, Stetson hat, Valentino necklace.
Beyond the screen, Centineo cares about the bigger picture, Fimognari says. “When we talk, it’s about life, it’s about relationships, it’s about some of the things that he feels he can do now, to be a force for good.” Later this month, Centineo will launch a nonprofit called Favored Nations; so far, the website says it is “a new way to help the world, for those who give a shit.” According to an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, "One hundred percent of the proceeds you spend on the hoodies, the T-shirts, whatever you purchase on the site, goes to a charity that you choose." As we talk, Centineo’s enthusiasm touches down voraciously on a range of topics. He loves that the Black Panthers made their leaders read two hours of current events every day. He’s horrified by women having to face “these aggressive men who can’t take rejection,” and he hopes we, all genders, can be taught from a young age “more reverence and compassion and emotional intelligence.” It’s not all heavy or earnest, though; he’s quick to get silly. When I ask him which dog breed he would be, he laughs uproariously and debates it before finally settling on, “I’m a mutt, I know that for sure.”
It’s an exciting time for Centineo, who’s been traveling to Brazil and shooting promos with TATB leading lady Lana Condor, but he won’t be slamming champagne on the club floor anytime soon. Centineo has been sober for the last couple of years, following a wild period that started when he was 17 and ended the day before his 21st birthday. Back then, he and his crew were roving the party scene.
“There’s a syndicate of, like, 500 to 1,000 kids in the entertainment industry that are all trying to make it right now that all they do Monday to Monday is party every night,” Centineo says. For him, it wasn’t all 200-deep house ragers in the Valley. Rather his and his friends’ favorite thing to do was to “take Molly and talk for five hours and like get to the bottom of some really deeply philosophical existential questions.”
Versace tank top, Calvin Klein jeans, David Yurman ring.
When I ask him about the drugs he’s dabbled in besides Molly, he says, “Everything. There wasn’t really much I wouldn’t do. I never, ever injected anything, which is good. I smoked a lot of things. I was really upset, man. It was a really dark time in my life.”
His parents divorced when he was 15. In the aftermath, Centineo lived for a few months in a hotel room with his mother, while his sister, Taylor, lived with their dad, a pastor, in Florida. “As the 15-year-old living in close quarters with my mom, I felt an obligation to step up and fill a role, fill a position that was vacant at that time, you know, and in doing so, I bristled and I kind of shoved down a lot of emotion.”
Once she found a network of good friends, Centineo says, he split. “I couch-surfed in the Valley and Hollywood for, like, four years,” he recalls. Then Taylor and he moved in together after she graduated from college, nearly three years ago. He says he’s still close with both parents.
He insists that he’s done trying to tamp anything down. “I do a lot of freaking out,” he says, but he also has his sanity-keeping rituals. “I like baths. I like meditation. I like journaling. I talk to myself a lot if I’m mad at something that I did. I’ll scream at myself, really, like,” he grimaces, “looking in the mirror, right? Like, in my room. Like, ‘Dude, like, stop, this is fucking unacceptable. You’re better than this!’ I hold myself very accountable, but I can talk myself off of ledges too. And that’s a strong thing.”
He can talk others off ledges as well. He tells me about actor Diego Velazquez who he first met on the set of Nickelodeon’s The Thundermans in 2013. When Velazquez was having a hard time, he reached out to Centineo. At eight o’clock one morning, they went for a long drive down the PCH and talked it out.
“It takes a lot of courage for somebody to ask for help. And when they ask you for help, you’ve got to answer that call,” Centineo says. “From that day forward, he’s my brother.”
For his part, Valezquez says, “You ever talk to somebody and they’re hearing you but they’re not listening to you? He was actually listening to me. He’s a really caring person and trustworthy.”
Velazquez says Centineo texted him saying that he’d bought Velazquez a plane ticket to Philadelphia to see an art show with him. They ushered in Velazquez’s 18th birthday together, and they’ve spent weeks at a time at each other’s houses.
Super-tight-knit relationships are Centineo’s thing, he admits. After running from his mom, “I looked for codependents.” His history is being “super compulsive and obsessive in my relationships, like, 24/7, all in.”
Which brings us back to his girlfriend, about whom he has been talking more and more as the day goes on. Alexis Ren is a Sports Illustrated model and Instagram star. The two have been dating for 10 months as of mid-January. “Yeah, it’s been a minute,” he says with a cheery grin. “It’s the longest relationship I’ve ever been in.” After thinking about it, he says matter-of-factly as if it’s a Yelp review, “She’s very good at monogamy. Actually, I love monogamy too.” He trashes the fantasy of the one-night stand. “Dude, you ever actually have one? Ninety percent of the time, they’re not good.”
Hugo Boss jacket and pants, Sandro top, Pyrrha ring, Tiffany & Co bracelet.
And here’s where we return to that fateful photo.
I drop him off—he trusts me enough to know where he lives, while I trust him not to judge my messy car. And then it happens: In the time it takes to travel from his apartment to mine—the space of about 14 minutes—he Instagrams a picture of the two of them, her playfully licking his beaming face—and all of it prompting so much analysis, so many questions. They appear to be in a pool or a hot tub (a storied place for Kavinsky, to be sure). Are they wearing suits? Are those two baby blue scraps on her chest pieces of some cool necklace, or are they bikini straps? How long is too long to stare at this thing?
It’s the first couple shot he’s ever posted, and he even drops a “love you baby.”
And a heart emoji.
The girlfriend hive mind lament their loss in several different languages. But they’ll get more of Centineo soon, maybe in ways they don’t expect. “I want to do movies that fuck you up, cerebral films,” he told me back at the hotel bar, “the kind where you can’t sleep after.”
As for what that would do to his persona or his fan base or his image—whatever; he’s willing to take the risk. “I don’t really care how people find me or why they like me,” he says. “If I can maybe help them in some way through them discovering me, that makes it worth it. I found that’s the only thing that really matters is how you make people feel.”
There’s a Robin Williams quote that Centineo loves, “You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”
His sister: “Noah’s driving force is people,” but also “the kid’s a game-changer. I honestly couldn’t even really guess where he’ll be in 10 years, cause he’ll turn around and surprise everyone anyways.”
As he moves forward, he’ll cultivate more of that madness. He’ll share that spark that so far, people have seen only at one angle. And if we’re lucky, he’ll let us witness glimpses of that spark off the screen too. As of today, it looks promising: He just shared perhaps the most emotionally revealing photo the world has ever seen of him: a man in love.
He is letting us in a little more.
Photography by Thomas Whiteside at Eiger Agency | Styled by Miguel Enamorado | Grooming by Sydney Sollod at The Wall Group | Chief Visual Content Director, Alix Campbell | Executive Editorial Director, Joyann King | Fashion & Features Director, Kerry Pieri | Entertainment Director, Nojan Aminosharei | Designer, Ingrid Frahm | Motion Design, Erin Lux | Supervising Video Producer, Kathryn Rice | Director, Robert Dumé | Director of Photography, Danny Dwyer | Video Editor & Colorist, Erica Dillman | Visual Editor, Cori Howarth | Photographer's 1st Assistant, Danya Morrison | Photographer's 2nd Assistant, Jacob Messex | Photographer's 3rd Assistant, Dylan Corbett | Digital Tech, Mike B | Production, Preiss Creative | Executive Producer, Paul Preiss | On Set Producer, Paul Treacy | Production Assistant, Evan Mancini | Production Assistant, Jess Kelner
