Charlie Bartlett is a little indie movie that’s hoping to do Juno-sized business at the box office. Whether it crosses over or not, its young star is going places. Anton Yelchin plays the title character, a high school kid who fakes mental problems so he can then sell his prescription medication to classmates. He also becomes quite an effective psychiatrist just by listening to their problems. Tom Cruise will either love this movie for ridiculing Ritalin, or hate it for giving such drugs free publicity.

Yelchin has already gone on to star in the upcoming Star Trek prequel as a young Chekov. Now there’s a role that takes advantage of his Russian heritage. He can pass for the all American boy just fine, though. Well, not quite. He wears a suit, is knowledgeable about literature, and speaks in complete sentences – other than that, just like today’s youth.

The Wave: There are so many unique qualities about Charlie Bartlett. What was the one thing you liked most about him?
Anton Yelchin: It really was the optimism. It was the honesty of him. Although I’m honest, I’m not optimistic all the time. [He’s] like Michael Corleone meets the character from Nights of Cabiria. I just thought it was a great way to explore life. Whether I could approach life similarly was a different question. I thought it would be really interesting to look into that, explore that. He really is sort of an incredible person.

TW: Are Russians naturally pessimistic, like Yakov Smirnoff?
AY: Yes. Yes. Most likely.

TW: What other qualities come from being Russian?
AY: I’m sure there’s a ton. Maybe brooding, I feel like it has its origins in Russians. Just the nature of the word – to brood – it is somehow instilled. Russia is very complicated. It has one of the most complicated histories. I could go on about this forever. It produces Dostoyevsky and Rachmaninoff, and then it produces Stalins and Lenins. It is such a strange combination. I don’t know why that rant about Russia was necessary.

TW: Since you started acting at a young age, did you have a normal high school experience?
AY: Yeah, I went to a public high school. There were years when I would miss like half a year, but I got enough high school to know I seriously disliked it. To me, school in general is such an unhealthy place. Every teenager is this incredible hormonal explosion, then they put a thousand of them in one place. It is like putting hot air in a balloon. Whoever came up with the idea wasn’t thinking very straight. You are supposed to come up with healthy, normal people, but you are putting all these imbalanced people together and expecting them to learn. It makes no sense to me. That’s sort of the attitude that I came to school with every day.

TW: So you weren’t an entrepreneur like Charlie?
AY: No, no, not at all. Maybe that would have made my days a bit more exciting, but no. I would just try to get out as fast as I could. I chose classes that ended early. I don’t even remember my last year. I would sit through English. I would sit through whatever my next class was and then I would get out. That was my goal.

TW: So being Russian, how is your Chekov accent?
AY: I think it’s pretty good. The thing about Walter Koenig was his accent was interesting. I think I’m just going to leave it at interesting. There are certain things that I took from the fact that he replaced every V with a W, which is weird. I don’t really know where that decision came from, but regardless, that’s the decision that he made and I thought it was important to bring that to the character.