Alden Ehrenreich can still remember the first time he saw George Lucas’s sci-fi saga Star Wars. He was five-years-old when he visited a friend’s house. There, he saw a pile of video cassettes, including Star Wars. After watching it, he was hooked. “I saw all the movies and loved them and had all the toys.” Even then, one character stood out: Han Solo.

Played by Harrison Ford, the roguish space smuggler became one of the most iconic figures in cinema history. Ehrenreich immediately starts reminiscing about classic Solo moments — from aiding Luke Skywalker during the battle to blow up the Death Star to charging at a gaggle of Stormtroopers. “I think he just throws himself into what he does and makes it up on the fly.”

Now it’s Ehrenreich’s turn to play the character in his early years in Solo: A Star Wars Story. It’s not unprecedented in the Star Wars universe; Ewan McGregor played a younger Obi-Wan Kenobi — the character first inhabited by Alec Guinness — and will reportedly reprise the role in another spin-off film due to shoot next year. But taking on the beloved Han Solo is a different proposition.

Ehrenreich, 28, is no stranger to living with expectations. He made his feature film debut for The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola when he was just 19, cast in the Argentina-set sibling tale Tetro. It was a real whirlwind for the young unknown. “I remember saying ‘I don’t know what will happen’ because I could never have conceived that I’d be lucky enough to get to do Tetro as my first film, which is still how I feel.”

Since then, Ehrenreich has worked with some of cinema’s most famous directors. He played Cate Blanchett’s stepson in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, starred opposite Nicole Kidman in Park Chan-wook’s thriller Stoker and played a cowboy-actor for the Coen Brothers in the comedy Hail, Caesar! Then he signed on for Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply, as a young chauffeur who works for the reclusive billionaire eccentric Howard Hughes.

Ehrenreich first met Beatty shortly after Tetro. “We kept meeting for six years and it basically became an apprenticeship of sorts. Getting to sit across from him and hear stories about Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles and Lillian Helman and Louis B. Meyer [was wonderful].” He calls Beatty, who began his career in Elia Kazan’s 1961 film Splendor in the Grass, “the link between Old Hollywood and New Hollywood in the Seventies.”

If that’s true, then Ehrenreich feels like the connection between his generation and those of New Hollywood, with the likes of Beatty and Coppola. Consider this: Harrison Ford starred in the 1973 Coppola-produced American Graffiti, directed by Star Wars creator George Lucas and co-starring Ron Howard, who wound up directing Ehrenreich in Solo. “There is sort of this crazy circle of connections,” he says.

When it came to taking on the mantle of Han Solo, Ehrenreich contacted Ford and the two had lunch. “It didn’t feel right to have not met him or reached out to him in any sense,” he says. “He was very gracious and very supportive.” But did he give any advice? “He said if anyone asked, tell them I told you everything you need to know, and that you’re not allowed to say anything!”

After he signed on, Ehrenreich deep-dived into the role. He was cast in March 2016 and went through nine months of physical training, “That was the surprising thing,” he says, “for these action movies, just how athletic you have to be.” He also got immersed in Star Wars lore, reading books and even learning how to speak Shyriiwook — the growl-inflected language of Chewbacca, Han’s hairy co-pilot —from YouTube tutorials.

He’s all too aware of how much of a global phenomenon Star Wars is. Far beyond the ten movies (Episodes I-VIII, plus spin-offs Rogue One and Solo), there are books, video games, comics, toys and rabid fan communities. “People love Star Wars so much so it’s nice to be part of one of these big kinds of movies… but one that people have such a deep, emotional connection with. It’s not just pure entertainment to them. It also matters to them on a significant level.”

Wisely, the Los Angeles native avoided reading the reactions to his selection as Solo (where he reputedly beat the likes of British actor Taron Edgerton and Irish star Jack Reynor to the role). “I don’t go on the internet, I don’t listen to any of that stuff. You know when you sign up for a movie like this [this is] is part of the fun and drama and soap opera of it all. That happens on every single one of those movies; it happens with every component of it.”

Far beyond reactions to his casting (which ran the gamut), the shoot was one of the more traumatic in Star Wars history. Part-way through, original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The LEGO Movie) were replaced by Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy after age-old creative differences became apparent. In came veteran film-maker Ron Howard, a two-time Oscar-winner for A Beautiful Mind, to steady the production.

“It’s disappointing,” reflects Ehrenreich. “You were going to do this movie in a certain way and that changes. I think they’re really wonderful directors and I really enjoyed working with them.” Their more comic take simply didn’t fly. “Everyone was so relieved and enthusiastic when Ron came on. He’s made so many movies. And is such a great guy and a wonderful leader and director and I loved working with him.”

The film itself takes us back to Solo’s early years when he’s yet to meet Chewbacca, or the smooth-talking smuggler Lando Calrissian or even sit in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. The world is riddled with crime syndicates and Solo teams up with Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), a larcenous mentor figure who shows him a life of theft. “To me, it’s a great swashbuckling adventure,” the actor says.

Speaking to Ehrenreich, it’s clear how much cinema — and not just Star Wars — meant to him as a youngster. “I grew up watching movies. I was a big film buff as a kid. That’s the joy of it for me.” He was even named after Field of Dreams director Phil Alden Robinson, a family friend, although his own parents were not industry insiders.

The only child of Sari, an interior designer, and Mark, an accountant, Ehrenreich has Jewish roots going back to Austria, Poland, Hungary and Russia. Growing up, he attended a Reconstructionist synagogue in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighbourhood. After his father died, his mother remarried an orthodontist, and Ehrenreich gained two stepbrothers. “They’re very close to me, but they’re a lot older than me.”

Early on, his mother didn’t want him auditioning for roles. “She’s very supportive of my acting now. And has always supported me in whatever I would want to do. She just didn’t want me to be a child actor.

Those first years are so fragile in certain ways, psychologically, and are going to stay with you for the rest of your life. So I’m very happy that that wasn’t what my childhood was like.”

Making films was a different matter. When he was 14, he helped put together a short movie for a friend’s barmitzvah. “We were just joking around,” he says, and yet it became what he calls his “discovery story”. Among the guests was the legendary Steven Spielberg, who saw the film, liked it and introduced the young teenager to DreamWorks, the studio he co-founded. From that, he got an agent.

After studying at Crossroads School in Santa Monica, Ehrenreich went to New York University, studying playwriting and continuing to make shorts. He even co-founded a theatre/film company called The Collectin, a collaborative group that saw writers, actors, producers and directors come together to work on experimental contemporary projects for each other.

When Coppola cast him in Tetro, everything changed. With his blonde locks and blue eyes, comparisons were made to a young Leonardo DiCaprio. “It’s very flattering,” he laughs. “He’s a good looking dude! And he’s given a lot of great performances.” In fact, industry paper Variety claimed he managed the feat of looking like three actors from Martin Scorsese’s film The Departed: DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon.

Now he’s destined to get the physical comparisons to Harrison Ford although, better still, Ehrenreich captures the rascal-like spirit of Ford. He’s already signed on for two more Solo movies. Is he ready for another wrestle with the character? “We’ll see,” he nods. “I look forward hopefully to be doing it again. It would be fun to play the character at the time where it would be picking up [from this film]. We’ll see what happens.”

For the moment, he’s heading back to Los Angeles to continue editing a short film he’s made. He has ambitions to direct a feature, too, although he’s unfailingly modest. “I think it’s good to get comfortable living in a state of never reaching what you think your mark is. I think that keeps you alive and trying. There’s a danger when you start going ‘I know how to do this’ or ‘I got this’. I think that’s when you’re probably going to fall on your face.”

Ehrenreich calls it standing close to the “edge of failure”, which is something that taking on the young Han Solo is fraught with. “All the great people I’ve worked with, years later after they do a movie, and it’s so successful… I’ll be at a dinner with them and they’ll go: ‘Y’know, in that third scene, I wish I’d done a little more of this.’ I think that’s a very productive, if uncomfortable, feeling.” It’s one he’s learning to live with.

‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ is on general release.