Despite being just 23, Dominic Sessa is perhaps as intimately acquainted with the 1970s as those who grew up then. Although the New Jersey-born actor has only starred in five films, two of them are marinated in the fashions, sounds and mores of the decade. In his new movie, Tony, he plays the 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain, future bad-boy celebrity chef, bestselling author of Kitchen Confidential and host of its hit TV spin-off. Tony restricts itself to one summer in 1975, when Bourdain bummed around the coastal resort of Provincetown, Massachusetts, falling in love, scrubbing pans in a seafood joint and catching the cooking bug. “For a rootless young man with sensualist inclinations,” he wrote, “it was the perfect getaway.”A 70s retro vibe also hung over Sessa’s debut film. In Alexander Payne’s Oscar-winning 2023 comedy-drama The Holdovers, he played Angus Tully, a surly student forced to board at school over Christmas with only his classics teacher and the cook for company. That picture wasn’t merely set in 1970; it seemed, with its faded palette and fake crackles on the print, to have been made then.The most convincing period touch in each film, however, is Sessa himself. He has been described as having a “1970s face”, a euphemism for “unconventional”. His crown of dark, jumbled curls looks as if it was scribbled in crayon by a hyperactive child, while his wide, narrowed eyes are set high and far apart in his upside down triangular face. He projects inner conflict: when Tony and Angus behave arrogantly and disagreeably, even aggressively, Sessa’s features suggest a wounded quality that hints at future self-disgust for any misdeeds.Sessa was barely aware of Bourdain before making Tony. “I knew of him but he didn’t have any significant meaning for me,” he shrugs, speaking over video call from a Manhattan hotel room. A gangly six-footer, Sessa is all elbows, collar-bones and sharp edges as he stares down the webcam in a brown-and-white checked shirt. “I think the only way to do the film honestly and without hesitation was to not have a strong opinion about him.”Now that he has been immersed in Bourdain’s history, he has clearer ideas about the pioneering chef’s appeal. “I think he made people feel an overwhelming sense of potential in themselves,” he says. “He inspired this movement where there’s hundreds, probably thousands, of YouTube channels by people who dedicate their lives to showcasing what’s being eaten in different parts of the world. He was a rebellious person, someone who acted with integrity.”Tony’s director Matt Johnson, who brought such vitality to the tech origin story Blackberry and the recent time-travel comedy Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, pointed Sessa towards two chapters from Kitchen Confidential, the memoir written in gunslinger prose and billed as a story of “sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine”. There, the actor found the characters who inspired the film’s triumvirate of Provincetown kitchen mentors, the men Bourdain likens to “gods” and “pirates”: the wise head chef (Antonio Banderas), the coke-snorting Jack-the-lad (Leo Woodall) and the taunting, vulgar mischief-maker (Stavros Halkias).Sessa as Anthony Bourdain in Tony. Photograph: Seacia Pavao“The restaurant we were filming in had only closed a couple of days earlier, so we were in a fully operating kitchen,” he explains. “Stavros learned how to make lobster rolls, Leo learned to shuck oysters. Matt was, like: ‘Dom, you go in and wash the dishes, and Stavros and Leo are gonna make fun of you.’ They made it all real for me. I felt genuinely intimidated by them. They’re so nice but I think they enjoyed the chance to bully me.”Dramatising Bourdain’s youthful exploits put Sessa in mind of his own misspent summers growing up on the Jersey Shore. He was raised in Ocean City, which was tranquil throughout the year then bustling with tourists during the holidays. His mother is a teacher; his father, who he has described as “a payroll guy”, died when Sessa was 14. He tells me he got his “opinionated” side from his mum, his sense of humour from his dad. “Jackass was one of the first movies he showed me,” he says fondly.After his father’s death, Sessa won a sports scholarship to attend Deerfield Academy, a boarding school in Massachusetts. “The only time I’d be home was in the summer breaks when it would basically be like a party. I worked in a bakery where I had early starts, and I’d be getting drunk on the beach before going to work; I was a mess. At that age, you felt you were invincible, you couldn’t get in trouble. We felt like we owned the place. We’d throw beach parties, then cops would chase us off the beach. You’d go to whoever’s house and their parents were gone so you’d destroy the place. We were menaces. Reading about the way Tony described his time in Provincetown, I was like: ‘Yeah, I get that. I understand.’”Partying wasn’t the only element in the film that chimed with him. “Playing Tony, I felt as if I was playing an unlikable side of myself,” he says, his tone no longer flippant. “He’s insecure and defensive at the start of the movie. I think a lot of young men have a very defensive way. You want people to respect you and treat you like an adult. But you feel as if you’re pretending. Deep down, there’s something underdeveloped that is hard for us to admit to. We’re always trying to hide that. I’m constantly going through that in my life.”‘I want to escape the modern era’ … Sessa. Photograph: Benedict Evans/The GuardianHe sits back in his seat as if surveying the scene before him. “Like, doing this interview, I’m pretending to be an adult, you know? Sometimes when you’re young, it’s to your detriment that you don’t allow yourself to fail in a productive way because you’re constantly trying to protect your ego.”