If you’ve been on the internet long enough, you probably have seen Will Poulter compared to Sid from Toy Story. It’s simply because Poulter looks like Sid if he grew up and became an actor. People have been comparing the two for years, and Poulter himself dressed up as Sid for Halloween back in 2017. It’s been a thing.
And people still are comparing Poulter to the animated character. Except, perhaps a bit more aggressively. To help promote his role as Adam Warlock in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Poulter took to the Lights, Camera, Barstool podcast to talk with the guys about the movie. When asked about Poulter’s oddest fan encounter, he talked about a man in a bathroom.
“I was using the bathroom, I was at a urinal, and a gentleman asked me to list some of the things I’d been in,” Poulter said. “And I can’t answer that without sounding like a real bleep, I don’t know if I can swear on this podcast.” When he got the approval to swear, he continued:
“Without sounding like an asshole. So I didn’t list any of the things I’d been in, I didn’t want to turn into Troy McClure and be like ‘You might remember me from such things.’ I didn’t do that, at least not in the bathroom. So I went ‘I’m an actor, I’ve done a few things, so sorry, I don’t know what you’ve watched.’ And he went ‘I know what it is, Toy Story.’ And I was like, how do I explain that that character’s animated, that it came out in 1996? But that was very interesting. He was very sweet about it.”
Will Poulter will never outlive Sid
Poulter has gone through a lot of changes over the years. Those of us who have seen The Chronicles of Narnia know who he is, but others coming to Poulter’s career later might be confused by him. He does sort of look like Cameron Monaghan if you squint your eyes and turn your head the wrong way. But more importantly, he does actually look like Sid.
The difference between our jokes about Sid and the guy Poulter encountered in the bathroom is, as Poulter pointed out, the fact that we don’t think that Poulter somehow played an animated character in live action when he was just three years old. To be fair, that man probably simply thought that Poulter looked like Sid, but the way tells the story makes it hilarious that this gentleman was convinced he’d figured it out.
Look, from this point forward, Poulter will be known as Adam Warlock. So while he’s still getting the Sid from Toy Story comments, we have to just embrace it. It is genuinely funny that his concern was with telling this man that Sid was animated and not just saying, “nah, that’s not me.” We stan a polite king.
Poulter’s comments on body image
The Sid story also appeared in a recent interview that Poulter did with GQ, and while it was the same anecdote (with a hilarious comment about how Sid was animated), he also talked about the reaction to his physical transformation for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Poulter has always been a tall man, and as someone who has watched a lot of his work, I’ve always found him charming and cute. But there are others who very freely comment on Poulter’s body. In the interview, Poulter talks about how people—particularly women—are constantly subjected to other people talking about their appearance, and how he thinks social media created this “problematic idea” that everyone’s opinion matters more than it does.
“It was weird when people started to debate my physical appearance online as to whether it was deemed attractive or unattractive,” Poulter said. “I am very comfortable and secure in the knowledge that I’m not conventionally attractive as I’ve always had remarks about looking unusual—whether it’s my eyebrows or whatever else, people have made a thing of that. I think it just speaks to a wider issue, of: Why are we discussing or spending so much time discussing people’s physical appearance? Especially in the case of women. But whether you’re male or female, why is that the focus so much? Unfortunately, social media has created this problematic idea that everyone’s opinion on everything matters equally.”
And he’s completely right! It’s not an easy road to navigate, and the world has gotten a lot more accepting of people just being quite rude about someone else’s appearance. Hearing from an actor about how it affects them to hear comments about their appearance and body should help to change the online conversation. I don’t think it necessarily will, but I’m proud of Will Poulter for acknowledging how hard it is for women while also talking about his own struggles.
But still, maybe don’t come up to him in the bathroom and talk about his eyebrows or Sid.
(featured image: Rich Polk, Getty Images for Disney)
