How Aaron Pierre Went from Sports Dreams to Movie-Star Trajectory: 'Acting Requires Athleticism' (Exclusive)

The 'Rebel Ridge' star tells PEOPLE the film was physically demanding: "My thighs were burning almost every day"

There was a time when Aaron Pierre never pictured himself on the big screen. Those Hollywood dreams came after the star's first obsession: becoming a track-and-field athlete.

"I was really obsessed with sprinting as a child and as a young adolescent," Pierre, now 30, tells PEOPLE. Acting, he adds, was "something that came a little bit later."

Born and raised in London, Pierre idolized former U.S. sprinter four-time Olympic medalist Maurice Greene growing up.

"I actually had the privilege of meeting him once. I remember yelling to my mom saying, 'Mom, there's Maurice Greene! Do you have anything he could sign?' This was before iPhones and selfies. So she gave me a receipt, and I ran over to him and he signed it," he recalls.

Pierre lost the autographed slip of paper, which he's still "devastated" about. Though his sports goals didn't end up being his path, the actor still gets to put his fitness to the test in Rebel Ridge, the action-packed thriller about small-town police corruption that also stars Don Johnson and AnnaSophia Robb.

"In my subjective view, being an actor does require athleticism," he says. "Is it always physical? Arguably not. But it definitely is mental and emotional athleticism that is required a lot of the time."

Related: Genius Star Aaron Pierre on Transforming into Malcolm X: 'StairMaster Every Day for 6 Months' (Exclusive)

For Rebel Ridge, filmed mostly in hot New Orleans, Pierre plays a former Marine and got to do most of his own stunts. "I certainly didn't go one day during filming without having at least a bruise or bump or scratch or graze or cut, and I loved that about it," he says.

Not to mention all those scene mounted on a bicycle. "We did a lot of cycling, and my thighs were burning almost every day that we had to do that. Especially the moments where I'm being really explosive on the bike, there's never a scene where I had to act that I was giving my best or act that I was sprinting — I was really doing it," says Pierre, who is also avid in boxing and martial arts.

"I was really tired," he says. "My legs were really burning. I was really trying to catch the bus or get through the potholes in the woods or whatever it might be. I had a really great time."

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The rising star is already busy with a flourishing acting career. After first making his screen debut in 2017, he has since been stranded on M. Night Shyamalan's beach that makes you old, portrayed Malcolm X in Genius: MLK/X and earned awards attention for director Barry Jenkins' series adaptation of The Underground Railroad.

Up next, Pierre has reunited with Jenkins for the title voice role in Disney's Mufasa: The Lion King, and been tapped as one of the newest members of the starry cast of The Morning Show season 4.

When was the moment he switched to aspirations of becoming a performer? As he recalls it, he was about 15 in a school theater production when he got the bug.

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"My high school didn't provide drama as a subject. They did one play every three years. I had the opportunity to be a narrator in Moby Dick, and I seized the opportunity," Pierre recalls. "I remember stepping out on the stage for one of the first times in my life where I'd been onstage by choice. That was the beginning for me of actually not taking myself seriously but taking the opportunity seriously."

Looking back on that core memory, he adds, "I was thinking that these wonderful people did not have to be here. I'm sure they're all tremendously busy people with a lot of things to do. So the fact that they are here, it's my responsibility to give my best."

"That was the beginning of me taking my craft very seriously and honoring people gifting us with their time, which is very valuable," says Pierre. "They don't have to do that."

Rebel Ridge is now streaming on Netflix.

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