No-one who has seen Ezra Miller act will be surprised to learn that he was a sensitive, creative and slightly eccentric child. The 25-year-old actor has built a career on playing the entire spectrum of odd. He was vicious and terrifying in We Need To Talk About Kevin; played the flamboyant-but-self-destructive misfit Patrick in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower; and essayed the part of an uproariously kinky intern in the Amy Poehler comedy Trainwreck.

Miller, who identifies as queer, always looked to pop culture to find characters he identified with; characters who were quirky, passionate, intelligent and challenged the macho cultural idea of who gets to be a hero. And when he didn’t find those characters, he would just make them up.

“As a kid, I also put a lot of time and energy into writing and drawing comics,” he recalls. “I had a whole series about three elderly women who were assassins, which was called I’m Getting Too Old For This. I even invented a superhero called Super Pig, who was a chameleonic swine of sorts! My nanny has a massive collection of Super Pig merchandise I hand-made, including shirts, action figures and comic book issues; the comics were drawn with one crayon. I was a one-man studio then!”iller admits that The Flash wasn’t one of his favourite heroes as a child, although he later came to connect with the character, noting that they’re both “nerds”. He found that The Flash’s vulnerability made him easier to identify with than more proud and powerful superheroes.

“The Flash – aka Barry Allen – is not infallible or immortal,” Miller notes. “He is very much a fragile, vulnerable human being. He’s also somewhat socially inept. He is also not fearless. My version of Barry experiences crippling anxiety and terror, and he uses wit and humour to deal with that fear. Barry has been endowed with these powers, some of which he’s incapable of handling because he’s human. At the same time, becoming a quantum anomaly of sorts is changing and growing Barry’s perceptual capacities, and his appreciation for everything that’s happening around him. This was all very inspiring for me to explore.”

While Marvel took literally a decade to introduce fans to their individual players, DC is diving straight into the group dynamic of the Justice League. As well as featuring Batman (Ben Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) and Superman (Henry Cavill), the film also heralds the arrival of many new characters, including Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds).

Miller is excited to introduce a new team-based film to cinema fans, believing it eliminates some of the individual egoism inherent in single-character films.

“What’s so wonderful about the idea of a team of superheroes is the contradiction it presents to the premise of individual heroism. That’s endemic in superhero mythology, in which one person with power is the only hope for salvation. In the Justice League, there’s a nice reminder that as interconnected beings, we need each other no matter how strong we are.”

The film posits that in unifying across lines of division, the heroes become an even greater force – even though they still have their own individual powers.

“It’s what we do on film sets too, you know?” Miller observes. “With the specification of labour, Arthur, the sound guy, holds the microphone above his head all day long. I pretend to run. Emmy does make up. Jason Momoa breaks things and throws stuff and yells. Steve muscles the dolly around. Zack Snyder directs. Ben Affleck keeps it real. Gal Gadot slays fools and keeps it hyper-awesome. It’s like a Walt Whitman poem. Everyone’s got their thing and when everybody simply trusts in their own power, as well as in each other’s powers, we can really make things happen.”

To prepare to play the fastest being on the planet, Miller spent years researching and physically training to portray The Flash’s movement in a unique and thoughtful way.

“I practised martial arts for two years, and even trained for a while in the Wudang mountains in China,” he reveals. “To better understand The Flash’s movements, I worked with several dancers and choreographers. I took an interest in ballet and found a lot that was useful in the form of petit allegro – ‘little fast’ – which consists of quick, lively and small jumps. I was also inspired by crows, cheetahs, mongooses and other fast-moving and intelligent creatures, as well as rushing water and, of course, lightning.”

Though the past decade has seen cinema become saturated with comic book adaptations, Miller believes that Justice League will prove particularly prescient, and affect audience members deeply.

“Obviously, Justice League is a fun comic book movie,” muses Miller, “but any story that reminds us of the simple, core truth that we are all living together on this Earth, and of this Earth, is welcome. We are experiencing quite a crisis on this prime planet of ours, and in many cases, it seems that we respond to crises by isolating ourselves in the groups we identify with most readily, which further deepens the trenches of our division. Transcending our differences and coming together to accomplish a seemingly impossible task – saving our world – is an imperative. We need one big international justice league and we need most people to join.”

Justice League is in cinemas from November 17.