John Boyega of "Attack The Block" Is The Future (PHOTOS)

Young British actor John Boyega, star of Attack The Block, the soon to be classic teenage sci-fi film about a band of friends defending their block from an alien invasion, spoke to GlobalGrind last Friday by phone from San Diego where he was to attend a screening of the film during the Annual Comic-Con.

Boyega, 19, grew up in South London and Attack The Block is his first film. This is not, however, the first time he's acted. Continue reading to learn more about this star in making.

GlobalGrind: Congratulations on the film, it's tremendous!

John Boyega: Thank you! Thank you very much.

What’s been the reaction in the UK?

It’s been good, very positive. People really seem to dig the film. Young people enjoy it and '80s movie fans really dig it. It went well, it's doing really well.

We hope it does really well here as well.

Fingers crossed on that one!

Attack The Block is very unique for a lot of different reasons. Mainly it’s multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and its sci-fi. And, usually with American films, you don’t really see that type of casting. Or that kind of story being put out there. Can you talk about the audition process? 

It was long audition process. Joe Cornish saw about 1500 kids and we did some improvisation in the first audition and we got sent a one-page dialogue for the beginning scene. And we had to come in and read it. I got recalled and, at the time, I was doing my first job at the Transco Theatre in North London. Then Joe Cornish, the director and Ira Park, the producer and Nina Gold, the casting director, came down to see me in the play. I had already had like 10 minutes on the stage. And after that, they came and gave me another recall and then we had time to bond with the others in the casting. I got the part and then we just got the ball rolling. 

How exciting was it to do your own stunts?

It was fun, it was really fun! It was great, fantastic! You know what? I was scared for some of them, but for others I powered through them. I kept thinking, 'What would Moses do?'

Was there a particular scene that you enjoyed doing?

I enjoyed doing the hero run, that was really fun to shoot. I felt like Bruce Willis, man. I really enjoyed filming that scene. It was really, really fun.

The scene where you are hanging on the Union Jack was pretty heroic. 

Yeah and you know what, how proud I am of that scene? That was all me, no stunt double at all.