The Tragic Story Of Miles Teller

Miles Teller has been acting for more than a decade, racking up accolades and important movie roles, crafting an IMDb profile that mixes franchises like "Divergent" with more artistic stuff like "Rabbit Hole." Along the way, he's amassed quite the contentious public image, even as Teller has kept much of his life private. In 2015, an Esquire profile was headlined "Miles Teller Is Young, Talented, and Doesn't Give a Rat's Ass What You Think," kicking off a round of bad press for the star amid speculation that he was "kind of a dick."

Teller was, understandably, unhappy with that piece. "Oh, I felt frickin' helpless, I felt extremely misrepresented, I felt a little angry," he told The Guardian the following year. Still, he spun it into a positive, even while he acknowledged that he'd been forced to reconsider the way he relates to the press and his fans. "Certain times I'll choose my words very carefully and maybe come off a little more boring," Teller said. "But I also think that's why people — certain people — do relate to me: because there is no agenda, honestly." He insisted that he comes from a humble background, a loving family. "I want to feel people think I'm a man of the people," the actor said. "Because I feel that way."

On his way to the top of Hollywood, Teller has gone through some pretty difficult things, from multiple car accidents to a physical assault. This is the tragic story of Miles Teller.

When Miles Teller was a college student, he took a long road trip with a bunch of friends. "Some friends and I had been at the Gathering of the Vibes, a Deadhead festival in Connecticut, and we were driving back to my hometown in Florida," he later told W Magazine. "My buddy lost control of the car, jumped three lanes of traffic, and the car flipped eight times." Teller was ejected from the vehicle and badly wounded. "Everyone was yelling, 'Where's Miles?!'" he recalled. "I was covered in blood by the side of the road."

The incident left Teller with scars on his face and neck, damage to his shoulder, and a broken wrist. Still, he tried to keep up his good spirits, and he told Esquire that he didn't hold a grudge against the driver. "I never blamed him," the "Divergent" star insisted. "I got a lot of laser surgery on my face, like what they use for getting rid of tattoos. Like, very painful. But I never wanted him to feel bad."

Eventually, the aftermath came between them. Mounting medical bills meant Teller had to sue his friend's insurance to get paid back, and his friend was unhappy. "After that I was like, 'Man, f*** you,'" Teller recalled. "Like, I've never made you feel bad for this. For you to make me feel guilty and make me feel like you're the victim here, that's really f***ed up."

It took a long time for Miles Teller to recover from the accident that left him scarred. In fact, he told ABC News' "Popcorn With Peter Travers" that the doctors decided to leave two pieces of gravel embedded in his face. "They could've [taken them out], but they said, yeah, it's surrounded by so much scar tissue that, you know, it would just leave another scar," he said. Instead, he underwent repeated laser surgery to make the scars less apparent. "It's on your face, and your skin starts burning," he said. "It's very painful, and I did that for three or four years."

A few years after his accident, Teller began going out on auditions, hoping to break into Hollywood. Unfortunately, he found that his facial scars were leading to some casting directors refusing to give him roles because of the way he looked. He recalled those early years while speaking with The Guardian, explaining, "When I was first auditioning for projects, they'd say, 'Miles is a good actor but it doesn't make sense for this character to have scars.'"

Director John Cameron Mitchell, on the other hand, felt that the scars worked for a character in the film "Rabbit Hole." He cast Teller as a kid responsible for an accident that takes the life of a child, giving the actor his big break. Teller told ABC News, "John Cameron Mitchell was like, 'I love [the scarring]. It tells a secret.'"

The car accident that left Miles Teller with facial scars wasn't the only one that affected his life. He told The Guardian that his accident was in August, the year he was 20. The following February, he hung out with seven friends who helped celebrate his 21st birthday. "Then in June, one of those guys, Nick, passed away in a motorcycle accident: a car ran a stop sign and T-boned him. I was at the hospital, he was on life support, they pulled the plug the next day," Teller recalled.

Nick wasn't the only friend Teller lost in quick succession. "A month after that, one my closest friends, my buddy Beau, passed away, again a car accident," he said. "And I was actually sitting next to Beau at Nick's funeral. So at my 21st birthday, seven of my buddies are there, five months later, two of them are gone."

Teller's horrific experiences affected the role he played in "Rabbit Hole," his first breakout. Speaking with Esquire, Teller recalled using his real-life trauma to inform his fictional character in a way that made him uncomfortable. "I knew what it felt like to hug a mother the day she lost her son," Teller said, recalling direction from John Cameron Mitchell to think about Beau. "I didn't wanna do it ... I still think you shouldn't use acting as therapy," Teller said. "That was the closest I ever got to that."

In May 2021, TMZ reported Miles Teller had been involved in a physical altercation in Hawaii. The outlet insisted that Teller was punched in the face by a wedding planner who had worked on his 2019 wedding to Keleigh Sperry, reportedly over an unpaid $60,000 bill. "We're told the 2 got into it outside the bathroom and Miles screamed that he was going to press charges," the outlet wrote.

Teller took to X, formerly Twitter, to confirm that he'd been assaulted. "I got jumped by two guys in a bathroom," he wrote, denying the fight was over wedding bills. "Never met them before in my life." Police released a statement to Entertainment Weekly, though they didn't go into much detail about what was responsible for the fight. "Police responded to a report of an assault that occurred at a West Maui restaurant involving a male victim and one responsible party," they wrote. "No further information is available at this time."

Thankfully, even though he'd been socked in the face, Teller was mostly fine after the attack, save for a black eye. Russell Nielsen was later charged with assault, according to TMZ, who stuck by their earlier reporting that the dispute was related to an outstanding bill. Nielsen's wife, evidently, owns a wedding planning company. Court cases can take a long time to work their way through the system, and Teller has not yet had his day in court.

While Miles Teller has been able to carve out a nice career for himself, having starred in well-received films like "The Spectacular Now," there are a few major roles that the actor missed out on. His career would undoubtedly be different had he managed to add these parts to his résumé, but things sadly didn't work out that way.

After Teller starred in Damien Chazelle's "Whiplash" as a drummer driven by perfection, Chazelle promised to cast him in his next movie. Teller would've had the Ryan Gosling role in "La La Land," but Chazelle went back on his word. "I got a call from my agent, saying, 'Hey, I just got a call from Lionsgate. Damien told them that he no longer thinks you're creatively right for the project. He's moving on without you,'" Teller told Esquire. He texted Chazelle, "What the f***, bro?" and didn't reveal if he heard back.

The "War Dogs" star has also been open about how much he wanted to play Elvis Presley. Speaking with W Magazine in 2014, Teller explained, "My main dream is to play Elvis. That's my goal. I think he and I look alike and do a lot of similar things well ... I want to play Young Elvis. They've never gotten that right." Teller was up for the role in Baz Luhrmann's 2022 biopic, but despite fan support and op-eds in places like Esquire UK, he lost the part to Austin Butler.

In 2022, Miles Teller played the son of Tom Cruise's character in "Top Gun: Maverick," one of the biggest films of the year. He was particularly grateful to his older co-star, telling ET, "For him to share 'Top Gun' with me and a lot of these other young actors it's just been such a wild ride." Cruise got along well with his younger co-stars, even giving Glen Powell a Christmas gift, and he was an important presence on set as the actors learned to perform dangerous stunts with planes.

While appearing on "Late Night With Seth Meyers," Teller told an anecdote about feeling ill after performing an action sequence in his plane. "I was really hot, and I just started itching like crazy," he said. "So I get out of the jet, and I'm just covered in hives, like, head to toe." Teller visited a doctor, hoping for an explanation as to why flying one of the planes had led to such bodily discomfort. The doctor drew Teller's blood to run some tests, and he took an oatmeal bath to help with the hives.

"My bloodwork comes back," Teller recalled, "and I have flame retardant, pesticides, and jet fuel in my blood." He thankfully recovered, and when he returned to the "Top Gun: Maverick" set, he told Cruise that he had jet fuel in his blood. Teller laughed, remembering, "Tom just goes, 'Yeah, I was born with it, kid.'"