TEEN ANSEL

Spotlight

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At age 19, Ansel Elgort is about to become a household name. Born and raised on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Elgort is the son of fashion photographer Arthur Elgort and opera director Grethe Barrett Holby. Surrounded by the arts as a child (and named after the American landscape photographer Ansel Adams), Elgort took up ballet at a young age, and it was a performance at nine years old with American Ballet Theatre that changed his life. "That was my first time being onstage. The exhilaration, the whole experience—I loved it so much." Young Elgort wasted very little time pursuing his dream of becoming a performer. "I started taking singing lessons so I could sing and dance, and then studied musical theater." He attended the famous upstate drama camp Stagedoor Manor for seven years. "I learned a lot from Stagedoor, howto be part of the ensemble and not the star all the time." But his ensemble days may be numbered: any anonymity he enjoys is about to disappear this spring as he stars in two major films. First up, Elgort played Caleb Prior, Shailene Woodley's brother, in Divergent, this spring's futuristic thriller based on the best-selling trilogy by Veronica Roth. "It is pretty easy to work off of her because every take is different—she sort of just lets it happen naturally, and that's what you want." Elgort will also appear opposite Woodley—this time as her love interest—in an adaptation of the young-adult best-seller The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green, about a girl dying of cancer who falls for a jock in her support group. The young star is philosophical about his rise: "You take one step at a time and then eventually you get to star in a big movie opposite Shailene, and that's the most insane thing ever. That's why I am starting to believe in luck." Fate may have been uncommonly cooperative, but it certainly isn't luck alone that has propelled Elgort this far. -KRISTA SMITH

KRISTA SMITH