MOST teenagers spend a lot of time in their beds. So maybe it shouldn’t be such a surprise that 19-year-old actor Anton Yelchin is in his scratcher when I phone his house in LA. But at least he has a valid excuse. “I got in at 2am last night from New York and it’s only about 11am here,” he says apologetically. “So I’m still in my bed.”

It’s difficult to begrudge him a lie-down; Yelchin has been a hard-working film and TV actor since the age of 11, where he got his first big break playing opposite Anthony Hopkins in Hearts Of Atlantis. Since then, he’s guest-starred in practically every popular American TV cop show on the box, from Without A Trace to Criminal Minds.

In the past two years, though, Yelchin’s career has jumped to warp speed. He’s just wrapped filming on the hugely anticipated new Star Trek movie, and will also play a key character in the new Terminator feature film. But before all that, we’ll see him in the title role of Charlie Bartlett, a whip-smart comedy drama about a rich kid who’s kicked out of so many private schools he ends up trying to fit in at a normal American high. And at first, his classmates don’t take too kindly to his smart blazer and chauffeur-driven limo.

We’ve seen lots of high school heroes down the years, from angry rebels to goofy pranksters. What’s different about Charlie is that instead of wisecracking his way into and out of trouble, he seems to genuinely want to help people, including the bully who beats him up on his first day and the principal – played by Robert Downey Jr – who’s suspicious of the moneyed newcomer.

“Charlie’s grown up having to take care of himself,” says Yelchin. “His mother’s sort of out of it and his father’s not there. And as opposed to most people who have to parent themselves, he’s actually really good at it. But I think his desire to help people also stems from his desire to have attention … that’s his whole thing. It’s just as important for him to help these kids as it is for them to be listening to him, be attentive to him.”

By presenting the problems of his classmates to various different psychiatrists, Charlie is able to glean professional advice and also access prescription drugs, which he then distributes at school. When the film was being made, was there any friction over the fact that Charlie is essentially a drug dealer (albeit one dispensing the same drugs “difficult” pupils would probably be prescribed anyway)?

“It wasn’t really an issue because that was the point of the whole movie,” says Yelchin. “We tried to approach it in a mild-mannered way. He stops selling them anyway when he realises he’s in over his head.”

So should we be approaching the problems of schoolkids in a different way, or just accept that it’s part of growing up? “It’s a difficult environment to be in. You don’t really have your stuff together. There are so many people who are insecure and don’t know what they want yet and we’re putting them all together for years, every day of the week! Sometimes it’s like they learn bad things from each other.”

Does that tally with Yelchin’s own experience of going to school, or was it different because he was away filming a lot of the time?

“I would come and go,” he says. “But I remember I was really awkward when I was 15. I was introverted and didn’t really know how to carry myself or conduct myself. Most of my extroverted stuff came out on set. That’s how I released whatever I was thinking or feeling.”

Charlie Bartlett proves that Yelchin can carry an independent movie himself, but with Star Trek and Terminator he’s entered the world of blockbusters in a big way. Unfortunately, not revealing plot details of these massive movies is now part of his job.

“Big-budget movies are just a lot of fun to do because you get to do things that you would only have done when you were five,” he says.

The Star Trek movie is a prequel to the original TV series which will show Kirk, Spock and the original Enterprise crew meeting up for the first time. Yelchin can at least talk about his character, the dashing, Russian-born navigator Pavel Chekhov. The burning question, of course, is: does he do the voice? (Chekhov famously pronounced “captain” as “kiptin”.)

“Yeah, of course I do the accent!” says Yelchin. “I watched a lot of the old show to get the Chekhov I wanted.” The two do have something in common: though he moved to the USA with his parents when he was six months old, Yelchin was born in Leningrad, the Russian port that was renamed St Petersburg in 1991. Chekhov is apparently from the same neck of the woods.

“I have a Star Trek encyclopedia which references old episodes and tells you exactly where each character is from. There’s one episode where Chekhov mentions that his grandmother was born in a little town outside of Leningrad. Which is weird, because that city doesn’t even exist any more …”

Yelchin was in New York working on a short film with Brett Ratner, the director of X-Men 3. Now that he’s getting used to blockbusters, did he lobby Ratner for a part in the next mutant movie? Or have all the best superheroes already been bagged by other actors?

“Yeah, it would be great … they’re making a Justice League movie, so there’s still a lot going on. It seems like there are as many superheroes as there are normal people in the world. There are tons of them if you go back to the original comics.”

So is there a hero he would particularly like to bring to the screen? Yelchin hesitates, as if I’ve asked him how the new Star Trek movie ends.

“The Flash is a great character,” he says slowly, talking about the DC Comics hero billed as “the fastest man alive”. But that’s all he’ll say on the subject. Perhaps his real superpower is keeping secrets safe …

Charlie Bartlett is released on May 9