Anton Yelchin stars as Charlie Bartlett Credit: MGM

Jump into the WayBack machine and remember when cute, 18-year-old Anton Yelchin was a mere tyke co-starring with Anthony Hopkins in Hearts in Atlantis. The Russian-born actor recently co-starred with Justin Timberlake in the dark drama Alpha Dog and will co-star with Mischa Barton in Finding t.A.T.u. This week, catch Anton as a sort of modern Ferris Bueller combined with Tom Cruise in the classic Risky Business in the darkly funny and totally teen-relatable film Charlie Bartlett. The young actor plays an optimistic high school underdog winning popularity as a bathroom stall shrink to his classmates; solving their problems and dispensing prescription drugs.

With Anthony Hopkins in Hearts in Atlantis Credit: Warner Brothers'

The biggest news for Anton at present is that he's playing Chekov, the Russian-born navigator of the USS Enterprise in the upcoming new Star Trek film! We wanted to know all about Charlie, Chekov and Anton's own high school experiences so we cornered him briefly at a beach hotel in California recently to get the scoop!

TeenHollywood: Anton, what was it about the Charlie character that you really liked?

Anton: It really was the optimism. It was the honesty of him. Although I am honest but I am not optimistic all the time. I just thought it was a great way to explore life. Whether I could approach life [like that] was a different question. I thought it would be really interesting to look into that. He really is sort of an incredible person.