Telegraph.co.uk-Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, Taron Egerton. All superb Robin Hoods, in very different ways. Egerton, who is about to join their roll call with his gritty new Robin, in a film produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, does not wear Lincoln green, or go riding through the glen. ‘He doesn’t slap thighs,’ grins Egerton.

His Robin is more like an anti-capitalist protester, a hoodie-wearing corruption fighter with a multicultural team of Merry Men. And a kick-ass Maid Marian, of course, in Eve Hewson – who just happens to be Bono’s daughter.

‘It’s high octane and it’s fast and edgy,’ says Egerton, whose fingers are still calloused from all the arrow action. He learnt how to perform next-level archery. ‘I’d be holding up to five arrows in one hand,’ he says, adding that he’d be firing them while leaping through the air. Pretty impressive stuff.

Directed by Otto Bathurst, of Peaky Blinders fame, and filmed in Dubrovnik, this all-new Robin Hood transforms Sherwood into what Egerton describes as a ‘hotchpotch world where there are different skin colours and different voices’.

Relatable, likeable, funny, oh, and hot – Egerton, 29, carries the movie with ease. Despite having graduated from Rada on a seeming fast-track to fame, he is still finding his way out of the chrysalis, still blinking at his new-found success, surprised that designers such as Giorgio Armani want to dress him for events.

Still reeling, in fact, from meeting Mr Armani for the first time. ‘He grabbed me by the face and looked at me in the eyes for about 12 seconds,’ says Egerton. ‘Which doesn’t sound long but it was a long time. Then he just nodded. If I believed in spiritual experiences, that would be one.’

During our interview, Egerton is impeccable – polite, charming, astute. Small (5ft 7in) and purposeful, he power-walks into the café on the dot of our agreed time, anonymous in a baseball cap, shorts and jumper. He gives me a hug and thanks me for speaking to him. He then orders a beer (‘I’m going to have a Friday-night drink, do you mind?’), before thoughtfully positioning himself with his back to the room so we aren’t interrupted by anyone asking him if he’s the guy from the Kingsman movies.

He already has a whole franchise to his name, the daft, massively commercially successful Kingsman films by English indie impresario Matthew Vaughn, in which he stars as heroic everyman trainee spy, Gary ‘Eggsy’ Unwin. ‘I was already into the comics by Mark Miller before the film, I swear!’ says Egerton.

He appears in almost every scene of both Kingsman films, which have all the joie de vivre of Roger Moore-era Bond, and none of the pretentious baggage the franchise later acquired. ‘Moore is my favourite Bond,’ says Egerton. ‘I think we borrowed more from him than any other.’

Egerton is almost too obvious a choice for the next Bond. And he ain’t that bothered anyway. ‘Because I made my name in a spy-thriller franchise, it holds less appeal,’ he admits. ‘Of course if Barbara Broccoli or whoever might be replacing her called, I would be honoured, but…’

When I offer him a choice of dream jobs, Hamlet at the National or Bond, he goes for Hamlet without missing a beat. ‘Without a doubt,’ he says. ‘I’d be thrilled and scared and wobbly to do Shakespeare again, and that’s when you do your best work.’

As we’ve been chatting Egerton has been fidgeting; all excess energy, effortfully contained. Then I realise there is a problem with his baseball cap. Under it, he has an itchy secret. For a second, he lifts the cap, revealing the stubbly regrowth and – what, blue hair dye? – around his hairline, and shoots me a wide-eyed look that is pure, unadulterated Elton John. ‘I’m not meant to talk about this,’ he says, ‘but I am playing Elton in Rocketman, the film of his life.’

This is the authorised version of Elton’s early years, with producers including David Furnish and John himself. It’s a to-die-for part, scripted by Lee Hall, directed by Dexter Fletcher, and co-starring Jamie Bell as Bernie Taupin. Egerton, who won the Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer prize while at Rada, and voiced a soulful gorilla in the animated film Sing, is doing all the vocals himself. ‘I love to sing and I’ve loved  his music since I was a kid,’ he says.