Boyd Holbrook, among “some of the most energizing personalities in Hollywood, music, and fashion”, was invited by Harper’s Bazaar to model for its Spring 2025 collection. You can see the result on our photo gallery:

Boyd also gave the magazine an interview on A Complete Unknown, The Thirst and what’s next for him:

Boyd Holbrook can’t be restricted to one lane. Since getting his start as a fashion model for brands like Dior and Jean Paul Gaultier, the Kentucky-born star has dabbled in everything from screenwriting to photography and sculpture. But to movie and TV lovers, he’s best known for his slate of onscreen roles, like DEA agent Steve Murphy in the Netflix series Narcos or the villain Donald Pierce in the cinephile-beloved superhero movie Logan.

But if you ask the 43-year-old actor now, he’ll tell you that he’s hyper-focused on acting, and he remains on the hunt for the “perfect role.” (When he’s not changing his newborn’s diapers at his home in upstate New York, that is). Holbrook can’t help but keep seeking new challenges with his performances, be it mastering stunts for The Bikeriders and Indiana Jones or stealing the show as Johnny Cash in the Oscar-nominated A Complete Unknown.

For Bazaar’s Possibility issue, Holbrook spoke about what new challenges he’s pursuing in his career, the pressures of playing real-life figures onscreen, and why sometimes when you’re lost in life, fate brings you Michael Shannon.

You’ve explored a lot of different kinds or roles and creative outlets. How do you build a space for yourself where so many different possibilities are open?

You know, I think I always imagined I would have this, I don’t know, all-engulfing, Picasso-esque life where everything you do is about your art. And that’s just not the case. Living on the road and having to do things with practicality, I guess that was the biggest difference in terms of what I thought I was getting into and the actuality of things.

You and your wife just had a second child. How building a family affected that?

I was talking to my wife about how I’ve been on the road for 10 months a year, for 12 or 13 years. It just made it so much more complex having a family. But you have to find the time and space to really just carve out what you need. For example, we live upstate and our pipes freeze every winter. So what I get time off from a project, I have to take the siding off the house and reinsulate our home. So it’s not like I’m spending 10 hours a day engulfed in a character. It’s great if you get just two hours a day! And then maybe, if you’re lucky, you even get four hours a day. And then you can daydream and really work on those characters.

To your point about time being precious, how do you know when it’s the right time to dedicate yourself to a certain kind of project?

I think you just need to pay attention to the signals in life. I’ve been inspired to find more indie films—a film that’s smaller than Logan or Indiana Jones or some other projects I’ve done. So I’m just listening and seeing what’s right, what fits in my life right now, so that I can truly accomplish it. Because it’s key to keep up your motivation on these marathons projects. So what’s going to keep me really interested? Sometime you have to set up a perimeter of what interests you, what you need, what you can accoimplish: “That’s out of bounds; this is in bounds. These are the rules of the game.” Once you can identify those perimeters, then it gets fun to engage with them.

You famously got cast in Milk after sending Gus Van Sant a screenplay you’d written. And you’ve recently written a movie called The Thirst, a sci-fi thriller about a world in which water is scarce. Do you plan to pursue more writing?

I totally do. I would love to make The Thirst. But the way I started out, I didn’t have anyone to help me to get into this industry. I got into it later than a lot of people and I thought, I’ll just shove my foot in the door. I went to film school before drama school and all that; I thought I would do the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck thing, you know? I’d write and act in what I write. And so I followed that blueprint up until a point where I gave Gus a screenplay and he said, “I can’t make your movie. But I’m making this film called Milk with Sean Penn. If you want to be in that, you can be a glorified extra.” And that was my introduction to the staircase that I’ve been walking up every since. But about six years ago, I made the decision to really focus on acting and to be really good at one thing. That’s what I’m doing now.

In A Complete Unknown, you get to show off your musical talents by playing Johnny Cash. You’re focused on acting but…would you ever consider a career in music?

Oh my God, I would love to. It’s so gratifying. If you have a good day at acting, you’re working through some emotion and it doesn’t always particularly feel great. But if you go out and sing a song, that’s always an amazing feeling. With music, the pie of creativity is really great—but it’s a daunting industry to get into.

Cash is one of many real-life figures you’ve portrayed. You played DEA agent Steve Murphy in Narcos and Denton Smith in Milk. What are the challenges of that?

You know, Cal, the character I played in The Bikeriders, was also a real person. I had audio tapes of him, so I was spending hours listening to the micro-subtleties of how this person says a vowel or makes changes to the pronunciation of a word. I could do 10 hours of that in a day. And that’s so cool because as a kid, at least for me, I mimicked a lot. I mimicked a lot of Robin Williams and Jim Carrey. So it kind of goes back to finding that essence and then finding your own sort of artistic freedom and expression of it.

You tell a story about meeting Michael Shannon in a department store and how it inspired you to go after your dreams of being in the entertainment industry. Philosophically, do you believe in singular moments that can totally change the course of a person’s life?

Those moments do absolutely change everything. I often think about why that happened. What’s the saying? “There’s no such thing as coincidence.” I haven’t read that book on synchronicity, but I know the theory. There’s a lot of magnetism, I guess, that attracts these two points to meet. If that didn’t happen, I don’t think that this moment in my life would have happened. The magnitude and the importance of meeting Michael was that it showed me this path is possible. So, is it karma? Do we have guardian angels? Are we living in a simulation? That’s a whole other long conversation for us to have.

At this point in your career, what possibilities excite you most?

I still want to chase down the perfect performance. Building a performance is a science and the longer you do something, the better you get at it. I’ve had really good bites at the apple but I’m still waiting for the full-course meal. That’s what keeps me so keen on searching for new, different roles and really going for it. I think I’m getting to the tipping point.

I’m 43 now, and I think I’m in the prime time for getting the really great parts. So I’m just trying to be patient and really mindful for what’s coming. I’ve got a little bit of a process now; I’ve worked with the same people for 15 years, and we always rehearse together. It’s easier to make good decisions when you have good people around you to check you and keep you on the straight and narrow. I’m just really excited. I’m a very optimistic person. I think things are gonna turn out all right.

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