Justin Theroux Shares the Origins of His 'Goth-Adjacent' Style (Exclusive)

Justin Theroux knows what look works for him: “Usually boots and black jeans,” he tells PEOPLE.

The actor and director, 53, was into all-black looks long before Tim Burton hired him Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (currently in theaters), the long-awaited sequel to the director’s 1988 comedy-horror classic.

Theroux’s casual style, which he calls “definitely goth-adjacent,” fits perfectly with the dark bug juice an aesthetic best represented by Winona Ryder’s unconventional character Lydia Deetz. Growing up in Washington, DC, “I felt like I was an emo kid and I think everyone was in a relationship with Winona’s character or wanted to date him,” he jokes.

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“I mean, there’s a very good argument that I haven’t changed what I’ve been wearing since I was 14,” he adds. “I was kind of emo, punk, whatever you want to call it back then.”

(L-R:) Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Winona Ryder and Justin Theroux in ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’.

Parisa Taghizadeh/Warner Bros. Pictures

Meanwhile on the red carpet, Theroux, who is recently engaged to Nicole Brydon Bloom, often wears a mostly black or neutral ensemble when posing alongside The Gilded Age actress.

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Playing the “insufferable” Rory Beetlejuice Beetlejuicelove for Ryder’s Lydia, was a fun opportunity to “give it a little lift, put on some eyeliner,” he says. And while the film’s Colleen Atwood-designed costumes weren’t “anything I’d wear in my everyday life,” Theroux admits, he and Ryder and co-star Jenna Ortega “were so excited about our wardrobe.”

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(L-R:) Jenna Ortega, Catherine O’Hara, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci and Tim Burton at the ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ photo call on August 17.

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I also join the original bug juice stars Ryder, Michael Keaton and Catherine O’Hara followed by Monica Bellucci, Danny DeVito and Willem Dafoe. The inventive and comprehensive cinematic world that Burton, Atwood, production designer Bo Welch and screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar built, says Theroux, was a dream come true for that inner Gothic.

“Walking on set and seeing Winona in her black petticoat, with black, sharp bangs and smoky eyes, was so much fun,” she recalls.

“I have such a soft spot in my heart for bug juiceand it’s one of those miraculous moments in life where you say to yourself, ‘Someone just gave me the key to the front door of that movie and I can enter that world.'”

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice it’s in theaters on September 6.

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Source: HIS Education