Blinded by the Light star Viveik Kalra said Bruce Springsteen’s gracious behavior relating to the movie extended to him charging very little to allow his songs to be used in the soundtrack.

The Boss had declined an invitation to appear at the European premiere because he didn’t want to draw attention away from the film, which tells the story of a young British Muslim whose life is changed in the ‘80s when he discovers Springsteen’s music.

But he made a surprise appearance the U.S. premiere earlier this month – and the was the first time Kalra had met him. “I was totally unaware he’d be there,” the actor told Entertainment Weekly in a new interview. “I’d gone from nothing, barely even knowing this man’s name, to him being on our red carpet, and I almost passed out. I fell to the floor and started bowing to him.”

Kalra added that, at the after-party, he "went up to him to shake his hand, and he gave me a hug, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, what’s going on?!’ But I just said, ‘Thank you very much for coming.’ He didn’t have to be there. He also didn’t have to give us the rights to his music for next to no money.”

The actor noted that he barely knew anything about Springsteen before taking the role of Javed in the right-of-passage film. “I was religiously listening to Bruce every day during filming, and even after we’d stopped filming,” he said. “But there was a point where I was like, ‘I need to get out of this because I need to find me again.’ I was listening to Bruce so much. But there’s clearly a reason his words speak to so many people — that’s because they are poetry and he is this Everyman figure to a lot of people.”

Blinded by the Light opens in theaters tomorrow.

 

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