Hero Fiennes Talks 'First Love' & 'After'

Hero Fiennes stole the hearts of women worldwide with his portrayal of the lovably-baddy Hardin in the After franchise. However, with the fourth and final movie, After Ever Happy, set to be released on September 7, we'd assume he's ready to say goodbye to the romantic lead role characters for a while. Like many in his position before, we'd imagine he's looking to get involved in new types of projects to avoid being type-casted. While this may have been true initially, Hero admitted that when the script for First Love came to him, he couldn't refuse taking on another romantic project. Here's what he had to say about this decision...

"I was reluctant to do another romance because I was aware I wanted to kind of diversify my portfolio and work on different genres and kind of test myself in that way," Hero told CinemaBlend, confirming our suspicions. However, the actor explained that although First Love was another romantic project, he was excited by how different the story was from that of Hardin and Tessa. "That was part of what drew me to it. Because of how different the film was tonally and how it's really like the other side of the romance coin and completely different in that sense."

And it's not just the romance that's different; the characters Hardin and Jim are too on "different ends of the spectrum," according to Fiennes, who referenced this as another attractive feature of the project. Falling in love with his classmate amid his parents' great financial struggles, Jim is a softer, more sensitive soul who loves to be in love. One who avoids confrontation and conflict, he's a far cry from the bad-boy Hardin and his drama-filled relationship with Tessa. "I find myself always wanting to do something different and finding myself to kind of be in the middle of where all the characters are to who I am as a person," he said.

With Diane Kruger and Jeffrey Donovan playing Jim's parents, Hero mentions this as another contributing factor. "I felt like part of the reason I took the role again was to work with people like that. I knew I'd learned so much, and I really did," he told CinemaBlend. Stream it now on Apple TV+!