Jack O‘Connell - Hollywood Authentic

September 10, 2026

Guy Pearce, Jack O’Connell, Claire Foy, Danny Boyle

VENICE DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER

The Ink actor tells Hollywood Authentic about the art of print, the sexism that women continue to fight and how she surrenders herself to opportunity in film.

Danny Boyle’s Ink, the opening film of Venice Film Festival this year, is very much about boys’ clubs. The elite, London-centric Fleet Street establishment, the male-dominated newsrooms of the ’60s, the way then-fledgling tabloid The Sun newspaper used female flesh to sell copies. In the middle of the story of proprietor Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce) and gonzo editor Larry Lamb (Jack O’Connell) is Jules, a composite character based on a number of female journalists at the time, played by Claire Foy.

‘Obviously lots of the people in the film are based on real, living journalists, and Jules wasn’t,’ Foy tells Hollywood Authentic on her flying visit to the Lido for the red carpet premiere of the film. ‘My job was to draw on experiences of women in editorial positions in 1969 in Fleet Street. So I read lots of accounts like Julie Welch in her book, The Fleet Street Girls, and I spoke to Eve Pollard, and just tried to gather as much information as I possibly could. It was important for me to make sure that I was portraying those women and their experiences, even if they weren’t actually being depicted.’ As Jules, The Sun’s first Women’s Editor, Foy rocks vintage clothes and gives as good as she gets in a bawdy, macho atmosphere where women are either wives or page three girls. ‘Unfortunately, it’s not much of a reach to imagine that scenario,’ Foy says. ‘Roy Greenslade [sub-editor on The Sun in 1969] came in and spoke to us. We really made sure that the environment, the atmosphere, the energy and what appeared on screen was as accurate as it possibly could be. We observed how the printing press worked, learnt about the delineation of the unions and the journalists, and how crucial that was. The artform of what it was to print a newspaper was extraordinary to see.’

The idea of sexism is not confined to an era or an industry, as Venice jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal pointed out in her opening press conference – film itself is still a male-dominated industry. ‘Jules is an incredibly bright, ambitious, capable, brilliant journalist, and she knows she is. She’s just not afforded the opportunity of exhibiting that. But she is able to grab hold of an opportunity and make the most of it. And I think that in lots of different professional spheres, that’s what women have had to do. Women have had to prove themselves ten times over for many of the positions that they’re in, and work ten times harder to feel the justification for why they’re allowed to be there. You have to work within it and tolerate it.’’

The film also asks audiences to consider their complicity in the tabloid-ification of the media world, even reaching to politics, which Foy thinks is an interesting debate to leave the movie theatre with. ‘It’s a conversation that lots of people are having – where the power lies, and whether the people who are dictating what we absorb and read are really understanding what we want. They just take the numbers, and go, ‘That’s what we should be giving’ without considering whether it’s what anyone wants at all.’ In this respect Ink bucks the trend for movies that are known factors. As an original film based on James Graham’s award-winning play, it’s not a franchise, a reboot or a superhero movie. That, says Foy, is down to the creative spirit and vision of Danny Boyle. ‘What I loved about being with Danny in Venice is that he says what he thinks, what he believes and what he stands for. It’s really refreshing to see someone who has the gravitas, the experience, and the authority to be able to be totally himself as a filmmaker. That doesn’t come without having done decades and decades of incredible work, and also challenging himself, and putting himself in different scenarios as a storyteller. We need to support filmmakers like him. This film is funny and entertaining but it’s also a film of our times.’

Foy went straight from the Venice red carpet to starting work on her next project, Lenny Abrahamson’s eight-part adap of David Nicholls’ bestselling book, You Are Here, the story of a midlife romance, co- starring Matthew Macfadyen. She describes herself as ‘very much in the foothills of making it’ but that it is ‘a really beautiful, quiet story’. ‘I just feel really passionate about making things like that, about people who aren’t 20 years old,’ she laughs. ‘Because I’m not anymore.’ She’s also looking to surprise herself with the work she does next. ‘I’m totally surrendered to the industry I’m in. It’s not something I can dictate or control. You just have to go with it, follow your nose and hope that if you go into something with the right intentions, then you’ll have a good time and feel fulfilled. That’s been working well so far…’

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Hair by GARETH BROMMELL
Makeup by KELLY CORNWELL
Styling by JONATHAN HUGUET
Claire wears BOTTEGA VENETA
Jewels by SWAROVSKI
Ink premiered at the 83rd Venice Film Festival
Read our review here

Dispatches

JACK O’CONNELL

September 6, 2026

Claire Foy, Danny Boyle, Guy Pearce, Jack O‘Connell, Ink

VENICE DISPATCH
Photographs GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

As his latest film, Ink, debuts in Venice to rave reviews the British actor talks to Hollywood Authentic about awards chatter and how acting expands his heart.

Having worked with Danny Boyle on both 28 Years Later films, Jack O’Connell considered the offer of playing ‘’60s editor of The Sun newspaper, Larry Lamb, in Ink for the director a ‘no-brainer’. ‘But it was quite early on in terms of the journey of the film being made, because Danny didn’t have the money yet,’ O’Connell tells us as the film opens the 83rd Venice Film Festival. ‘So then it became a case of: ‘Right, OK. We need to convince some financiers that this is worth parting with their cash’. He brought me and Guy Pearce in and we did some stuff on camera so that Danny could go and try and raise the funds. It took two-thirds of a year just to get the green light.’

That scrappy, entrepreneurial spirit is a match for the film itself; the story of Rupert Murdoch (Pearce) inviting Lamb (O’Connell) to reinvent a newspaper and tear up all the Fleet Street rules. ‘Yeah, a lot of parallels,’ O’Connell laughs. ‘But also I really value the importance of a free press, and its role within any proper democracy. I have a respect for it and I do like to read newspapers.’ For O’Connell, his perception of the hugely popular newspaper was negatively coloured by a ‘post-Hillsborough perspective’ [when the newspaper falsely reported Liverpool football fans behaviour at the fatal 1989 overcrowding disaster at Hillsborough] so his approach to the role and Lamb’s enthusiasm for it required a research deep dive. ‘I had to undo all of that pre-existing knowledge, and just consider this in its infancy, and who Larry Lamb is, who’s been appointed to grow it. I took myself off to the British Library. I went into their archives. I pulled out some microfiche of editions of The Sun when Larry first took over, and I looked at some prior to him being there. They’re unrecognisable. It was about honing in on that period and getting into Larry’s headspace. There’s a great line in Larry’s book where he said that he felt like he was cooking up the perfect newspaper in his head way before he met Rupert Murdoch. That was a real driver to me.’

West Yorkshire Lamb and Australian Murdoch were also working against a London-centric establishment and an ‘old boys network’, trying to get a foothold in an industry with a drawbridge mentality. ‘I do relate to it very personally, yes,’ O’Connell, who hails from Derby, admits. ‘Any class-based society is going to have that, you know? And we live in a class-based society. But Larry Lamb was given a knighthood, and he accepted it so I do think he was very seduced by that establishment. The same thing that he was tearing down to begin with, he leaps into bed with eventually. There was this underlying contradiction within him. And I love those roles. I think as an artist, you are fascinated with where people contradict themselves and inconsistencies.’

Lamb’s obsession with circulation numbers – always trying to best market leader, The Mirror – also had parallels with acting for O’Connell with film often being viewed through the lens of box office takings. ‘It’s figures, isn’t it? Ink feels like a real vehicle for exploring hyper-capitalism. All the journalists that we spoke to that worked there during that time were saying that these were times of plenty, and there was so much spare cash just floating around – which is impossible to imagine for us these days. But they were just rolling in it, and had all these resources. It was hyper capitalism, and they were obsessed with sales and the competition within that. I think that was a huge catalyst in perhaps where they allowed themselves to get carried away.’

O’Connell is currently experiencing a time of plenty himself, with a recent flurry of high-profile and critically acclaimed roles including award-winning Sinners, 28 Years Later parts 1 and 2, and his upcoming films Godzilla X Kong: Supernova, as well as A Quiet Place Part 3 which has just wrapped. For some audience members it might feel like O’Connell has finally arrived. For him, it’s part of a journey that’s been developing for years. ‘I got into this 20 years ago, and you grow. You get better with every job, and you get to learn by working with people you meet. And I love that about this job. You’re constantly developing, and you’re having your ideas challenged. You never stop evolving for every role. You’re expanding your heart. You’re exploring emotion. It’s such a joy and a pleasure to allow that to inform you.’

Part of the process has been the mentorship of other artists. ‘Look, to be able to collaborate in this job is the most wonderful thing – just meeting people from all over the world. Even being here promoting films, and getting to meet your heroes. When I was getting into it I was able to look up to these amazing figures. The people that I worked with on my first job – they were generous enough to share what they were good at. And I think there’s a slight responsibility there for me to do the same with people coming into the industry now.’

His busy upcoming slate is as a result of hard graft but there’s no masterplan, he says. ‘You’re trying to pull rabbits out of hats, you know?’ he laughs. ‘In order to excite yourself, and in order to excite others, it’s best to just keep challenging yourself. I like range. My last jobs, they’re all quite distinct. Moving forward, that’s the ethos, that’s exciting to me.’

Ink’s debut at Venice has kicked off the awards conversation. Is this an important part of the process too? ‘Of course, man. More so from an industry perspective – where it takes you, and the places you get to go, and the people you get to meet. But when you’re working it’s not what you’re thinking about. You know, you end up on set at five in the morning in a fucking disused quarry, up to your ears in shite – it’s a long way away from a gondola in Venice, you know? They’re worlds apart. They’re very, very separate experiences. But it’s a joy. It’s amazing that we get to do it.’

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Ink premiered at the 83rd Venice Film Festival
Read our review here

Dispatches

GUY PEARCE

September 4, 2026

VENICE DISPATCH
Photographs GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

The Australian actor takes on Rupert Murdoch in Danny Boyle’s tabloid tale Ink, opening the Venice Film Festival. He tells Hollywood Authentic about reigning in the profanities and experiencing tabloid hounding with Jason and Kylie…

When Danny Boyle came to Guy Pearce to ask him to play media baron Rupert Murdoch in his adaptation of James Graham’s award winning play, the actor felt that he could understand some of the mentality of the notorious newspaper and studio magnate. ‘Obviously, look, I’m Australian,’ he tells Hollywood Authentic as he prepares to walk the red carpet for the film’s premiere in the Lido. ‘I’ve been brought up in a world that’s been aware of Rupert Murdoch for many, many years. He’s a fascinating character for me. I’ve never met him, and prior to doing the film I couldn’t really tell you that I understood who he is. I still probably couldn’t really say that I understand completely who he is. But him trying to crack the UK market… that, I get to a degree. As an Aussie actor, and having known lots of Aussie actors who all go to England and try to break there, it’s something I can relate to.’

Pearce could also relate to the product Murdoch created in 1969 in collaboration with editor Larry Lamb (Jack O’Connell); The Sun newspaper and the tabloid culture and circulation wars that followed. Having broken out in the ’80s while on Australian soap Neighbours he had witnessed first-hand some of the press hounding that came with fame. ‘I remember back in the ‘80s in London with Jason [Donovan] and Kylie [Minogue], and the journalists chasing us down the street. But I was really low down on the food chain, you know? I was one of a gang of 20 Neighbours cast where the Terry Wogans of the world would have us on their show, and go, ‘What is it about you Australians that make you think you can act?’ – where you really felt a bit reviled. But I was never a personal target. I never really felt the full force of a tabloid paper at my door, and after me.’

What Pearce felt was more relevant to building the characterisation of Murdoch was talking to former journalists and printers who had worked on Fleet Street during its evolution from failing broadsheet to bombastic ‘red top’. ‘Danny brought people in to talk to us during rehearsals, lots of journalists, ex-editors and ex-printers who would sit with us for two hours and go, ‘Wow, let me tell you about the floor in 1969: the drinking, the smoking, the shagging and the late nights and oh my God….’ Though he didn’t meet Murdoch as he prepped to play him, Pearce did chat to his daughter, Elizabeth, to suss out whether his instincts about the man were correct. ‘I felt that there was probably too much swearing from Rupert [in the script]. It’s a fairly common thing to just make Australian characters swear all the time. But when you look at interviews of Rupert from the era he’s a shy, fairly humble, slightly awkward character who has an irreverence about him, and is quite sharp and brilliant. But he’s not a typical Aussie yobbo who’s out there swearing, drinking. throwing things and rooting and fighting. I said to James, ‘I feel like I could play this character without relying on swearing’. And the beauty was that I got to talk to Rupert’s daughter and ask about her dad’s swearing. She said, ‘I don’t think I heard him swear once’. So I took out all the ‘fucks’ and added a ‘fair dinkum’.’

Director Boyle inspired Pearce to really explore the building of a surprising character instead of playing a trope we all think we know. ‘Danny’s a wonderfully buoyant, honest, creative and inspirational guy. It’s that energy that he brought to Trainspotting in making us look at a world that was seemingly gross and disgusting, and yet we all just leant forward and went, ‘I want more of this’. You can have a great script, and another director doesn’t quite give it the life that it felt on the page. And vice-versa; you can read a fairly dull script, and a director can bring it to life. But with this, when I watched the film I was jumping out of my chair by the end, going, ‘Wow! Yes! Oh my God! Wow!’ Danny’s energy will take you into that world, and make it exciting.’ And Pearce admits that having Bertie Carvel in the cast – who originated the role of Murdoch in the West End and Broadway – also kept him on his creative toes. ‘He’s such an exquisite actor. Of course, every day when he was there, and I’m playing Murdoch, I’m thinking, ‘Don’t watch what I’m doing. Don’t look. Oh, God’,’ he laughs.

As an actor who has taken on numerous roles that began life as books or plays, Pearce is clear that comparison of versions is futile as an artist. ‘Every time I thought about the play, or talked to one of the actors who was in the play, it felt a little bit like a distraction to me. When you do a film, and it’s based on source material it can be an absolute minefield to delve into that material. It can be wonderful, because you get all sorts of other nuances about a character that you might not fully get in a script, like with LA Confidential, for example. But I find the purity of a screenplay – and what it is I’m responding to in the first instance – is really vital to me.’

That vitality is what he thinks has made Ink such a barnstorming opener. ‘The kudos and attitude – it feels historic and full of integrity and credibility,’ he says of the festival. And the relevant themes of the piece exploring public appetite for scandal and the increasing tabloid-ification of politics are what will keep audiences talking about it. ‘The sense of responsibility… we’re seeing things being torn down left, right, and centre. But you look back at The Sun, and it seems almost small fry and quaint now. Social media, AI, governments involved with surveillance… you can see the connection. You could also ask the question: well, was it inevitable anyway? And it’s just that Rupert came along at a time? It’s such a big question, isn’t it, about where we are in the world today?’

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Guy wears Brunello Cucinelli
Ink premiered at the 83rd Venice Film Festival. Read our review here

Screening Room

INK

September 2, 2026

Words by JANE CROWTHER

James Graham’s award-winning West End and Broadway hit charting the birth of Britain’s The Sun newspaper and tabloid culture served the drama without op-ed – leaving the audience to decide on the morals and ethics at play, and the Pandora’s box such practice opened. Danny Boyle (with Graham adapting his work for screen) makes no apology for drawing a direct line between the ‘move-fast-break-things’ MO of newspaper proprietor Rupert Murdoch and his editor, Larry Lamb, and the latter-day rule-breaking narrators shaping our world. The epoch of The Sun, he posits, is the hellmouth for our problematic 21st century media landscape – that Murdoch and Lamb have blood, as well as ink, on their hands. And that we, as consumers, are as voracious as any hack hounding a story. But there’s also admiration for the underdog ambition and anti-establishment disruption of the endeavour, told with antsy Trainspotting verve and a nostalgic respect for the craft of physical media.

Bookended by two meetings at Rules restaurant in London, Ink begins in 1969 with Aussie businessman Murdoch (Guy Pearce) making Northern journalist Lamb (Jack O’Connell) an offer he can’t refuse over a lobster dinner; editorship of an ailing broadsheet, with no guard rails and the opportunity to stick one in the eye of Fleet Street’s old boy’s network. Wily Lamb immediately tells Murdoch the principles of a good story – the 5 W’s: who, what, where, when and why. The ‘why’ he says, is the least important but it’s an element that drives the tale here with both men’s motivation explored. Ambitious Lamb is hellbent on besting his former employers at The Mirror as well as rattling a London-centric, middle-class and public school establishment that hazed him as a newbie. Murdoch’s desire to screw colonialism comes into focus as he amasses media companies with gimlet-eyed precision while being named ‘the dirty digger’ by Private Eye.

While the ‘why’ percolates, the who, what, where and when is provided as Lamb corrals a scrappy editorial team together like Danny Ocean recruiting his heist gang, enticing specialist journos onboard from Fleet Street bars, bathhouses and in the case of new women’s editor, Jules (a composite character and played by Claire Foy), his extra-marital bed. Moving as fast as the printing presses that are constantly heard as a low thrum throughout the action, Lamb’s initial building of a tabloid is a thrilling and amusing spectacle. In a smoke-filled newsroom of clattering typewriters and stories being slapped on spikes, Lamb demands his team make their work ‘louder’, conducting a brainstorming session to identify the real interests of the working man. TV, sport, personalities, weather and sex are top of the agenda, with the words ‘win’, ‘free’ or ‘love’ on the cover nabbing his staff a bonus. As the circulation figures creep up, the giveaways get sillier (knickers in a tin) and the presses roar, with Boyle leaning into framing and lighting that evokes Citizen Kane and a fondness for a lost world soundtracked by IDLES’ The New Sensation. Lamb swaggers through his domain demanding more WOBs (white on black text), italics, dog’s dicks (exclamation points), bangers (design roundels) as the typesetters sweat over the galley and chase… the sort of Fleet Street nerdism that demands a linotype advisor on the film’s credits.

It’s exhilarating stuff loaded with archival footage and AI-animated Getty images which showcase Murdoch and Lamb’s particular brand of fearless entrepreneurship, and leads them to the Press Council Awards where the elitism and bullying of the industry is laid bare. ‘The Aussie sheep farmer – a seat at the table’ Murdoch glowers of his personal oneupmanship. There is, of course, a price… rats are scuttling around the newsroom, there’s hypocrisy in exposing the failings of public figures and, when a Sun exec’s wife is kidnapped, real consequences in the way Lamb chooses to package the news. Shuttling through the arrival of page three girls, Thatcher, Murdoch’s empire expansion and Lamb’s successor, Kelvin MacKenzie, Boyle speeds up the flickering images to bring us to the sobering present via Princess Diana, Caroline Flack, Zuckerberg, Musk and Trump.

Considering the TS Eliot quote that closes this story, it would be easy to simply despise the players but in the hands of Pearce and O’Connell, Murdoch and Lamb remain complex human figures. Pearce’s clenched Murdoch, not yet a media baron, is a fascinating work in progress, while O’Connell gives Lamb a drive and charm that carries some of his more morally dubious choices into pathos. And Boyle’s ability to eddy audiences along with propulsive music, editing and strong period detail is like being sat on one of the tube trains that constantly hurtle through the piece. Entertainment is what Murdoch wanted from his newspaper and it’s what Boyle delivers here.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of STUDIOCANAL/NETFLIX
Ink premiered at the 83rd Venice Film Festival and will be in cinemas 11 December

Screening Room

28 YEARS LATER

June 20, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Danny Boyle’s return to his ‘infected’ fable delivers the same nail-chomping tension, social commentary and energetic cinematography/soundtrack mash-up as his 23 year-old original – but now with added nightmare fuel, humour, hope and yes, profundity. As a meditation on mortality and Britain it’s unsubtle, but it’s also thrilling, moving and weirdly life affirming. It could be the best 115min you never spent in therapy.

28 Years Later, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams, Danny Boyle, Jack O‘Connell, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes — Miya Mizuno/Sony

In 28 Days Later we had Cillian Murphy’s bewildered patient waking up in an abandoned London, in 28 Weeks Later (not written by Alex Garland or directed by Boyle) we had survivors holed up in a clean sector of the UK’s capital. Now we’re a couple of decades after the original outbreak of the rage virus and Britain is a quarantined island of naked body slurpers, the rest of Europe leaving normal lives while sending their fleets to patrol the coastline and ensure the madness stays within this scepter’d isle. Very Brexit.

While the mainland is over-run with grubby infected (fast-sprinting, slow and low, souped up ‘Alphas’), a group of survivors are self sufficient on Lindisfarne island having lapsed back into traditional roles and religious worship where the women raise children, teach and cook and the men protect, hunt and gather. When they want a party they drink home brew and sing ‘Delilah’ by Tom Jones while dancing by candlelight. Very Wicker Man.

Jamie (Aaron Taylor Johnson) is an enthusiastic killer of the infected, who wants to take his 13 year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams) on his first hunt on the mainland, leaving his disorientated, ill wife Isla (Jodie Comer) to rant in her sweat soaked bed. The duo set off for a horrifying trip where blood splatters, the rules of the world are established and the glimmer of other life is seen through the trees. A fire burning far away could be evidence of the Kurz-like Doctor Kelson (Ralph Fiennes). By the time you’ve bitten every nail off, Spike and Isla are wandering through the wilderness of the North of England (and in a nod to recent British lunacy, past the Sycamore Gap) and meeting various zombies, a stranded Scandinavian sailor and the good doctor who has developed an ashes-to-ashes methodology to find solace in the dead…

While still trading in jump scares and the mouth-drying fear of being hunted, Boyle and Garland are now more interested in finding the beauty in the horror. There’s moments when a thousand strong herd of deer undulate across a hillside, when Kelson explains his form of worshipful remembrance, when zombies splashing in a bucolic river look almost like forest sprites. And moments of human tenderness – the understanding between women that crosses insanity, the strength of a mother, the bittersweet taste of losing someone adored. How to love and lose is better than to never love at all. Tears will be shed on account of Comer’s stealth performance which sneaks up and gut-punches straight after an enjoyably silly bit concerning plastic surgery and a Shell petrol station missing its ‘S’. Fiennes is predictably perfect – iodine orange and making the most sense in a post-Covid world. The left turn comes at the end with a Jack O’Connell teaser for the sequel that nods to Jimmy Saville and a ride even more wild than this one. An infectious promise.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.
28 Years Later is in cinemas now

Screening Room

SINNERS

April 17, 2025

Words by JANE CROWTHER

When twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan via unobtrusive CGI sleight of hand) return to their Mississippi home after fighting in WW1 and then brawling in Chicago, they’ve seen some things. Having made some cash by disreputable means in the north, the brothers are gold-toothed, tailored and handy with guns and knives – and set on opening their own juke joint in their old neighbourhood. They may pop a bullet in a would-be thief’s ass without a care, operate as a slick unit and move through the world with a cocky stride (unless they’re talking to the women they left behind), but they’re about to be shaken by ungodly sights on opening night…

Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O‘Connell, Li Jun Li, Michael B. Jordan, Miles Canton, Sinners, Yao — Eli Adé/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Rooted in the myth of a blues player paying for their talent via a deal with the devil (it’s set in Clarksville, the location for Robert Johnson’s crossroads), Ryan Coogler’s seductive, steamy take on From Dusk Til Dawn may not serve up a new scenario – one night in a bar beset by vampires – but it does provide a multi-layered, evocative and stylish night out on the sauce. In Coogler’s hands, a war for souls in a Jim Crow world has much to say about race, poverty, warfare, grief, colonisation and music, and the fact that though set in prohibition America, certain things remain depressingly the same as they ever were.

The bigger socio-political picture is wrapped in a compellingly small human story that unfolds as the brothers enlist a gang to open their club in an old sawmill. Their cousin Sammie (Miles Canton) may be a preacher’s boy but he plays the blues like Satan himself and will lose his innocence before the sun rises. Voodoo priestess Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) is brought in as chef and provides spiritual leadership as well as finger-lickin’ catfish. Drunk musician Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) is co-opted as an act but has seen it all before; Chinese storekeepers Bo and Grace (Yao and Li Jun Li) bring the equipment and a marital quandary, while Stack’s ex Mary (Hailey Steinfeld) and a sunburnt stranger (Jack O’Connell) are white visitors who mess with the vibe in different ways.

Gorgeously costumed (Ruth E. Carter), lensed (filmed in IMAX with a thank you note to Christopher Nolan in the end credits) and production designed (Hannah Beachler); Sinners may be peopled by intriguing characters but its music is also one. Ludwig Göransson’s lush score is sultry, soulful and needs to be heard in the surround sound of a cinema, not waited for at home. It provides a standout sequence at the midpoint when the beer is flowing and the blues are slapping, when music connects past, present and future and – for the duration of a song – everything seems right with the world. It’s exactly the sort of poetic, pertinent and ballsy moment we’ve come to expect from Coogler and connects deliciously to a cheeky mid-credit and post-credit sting. Bloody good stuff.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Photographs by ELI ADÉ/WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC.
Sinners is in cinemas now

Breakfast Club

JACK O’CONNELL

May 16, 2024

Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to Jane Crowther

Jack O’Connell doesn’t like to hurry his eggs. ‘Low and slow,’ he insists, talking me through his breakfast wrap one drizzly March Friday morning in north east London when I meet him at his home. He takes half an hour to scramble his eggs as he crisps his accompanying black pudding, sausage and streaky bacon for our brunch. ‘I’ve always wanted to do a cookery show,’ he chuckles as he diligently stirs. ‘Don’t rush them…’

The actor’s domestic vibe is similarly exacting – ‘a tidy house, a tidy mind,’ he says of his spick ‘n’ span home – and is also reflected in the way he approaches his work. Though he has form playing troublemakers, rule-breakers and trailblazers in projects such as This Is England, Skins, Starred Up, Unbroken, The North Water, SAS Rogue Heroes and Ferrari, Jack doesn’t adhere to the idea of playing a hellraiser on and off screen. ‘It’s a funny one, isn’t it?’ he says, scarfing down his breakfast wrap. ‘If I’ve got a good head on my shoulders, and I’ve slept, and I’m rested, and I’m on set, it’s the best place to be. You know what I mean?’

As Bob the dog (more of whom later) weaves round our legs, Jack shows me round his house, pointing out the art he’s bought on his travels, including a Shane McGowan (‘I picked this up in Bantry, in Cork – it’s painted with peat from the bogs’), and the plants he’s currently cultivating. ‘This fella needs to cheer up,’ he says of one of the plants he’s just repotted, its leaves scattered around the floor next to it, ‘and this fella is thriving…’ His art is mainly of musicians, which is apt considering he’s next playing the husband of Amy Winehouse, Blake Fielder-Civil, in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s new biopic, Back to Black. ‘The last five or six years, I’ve started to really, really appreciate cinema. Not just actors, but the whole craft. I’ve always loved music but I never had the attention span for films as a kid. I’d get fucking bored – unless it was Braveheart with loads of scrapping, and all that action kicking off.’

While he might not have fully appreciated film and acting as a teen growing up in Derby, it intrigued him enough to attend a drama workshop twice a week in Nottingham with Ian Smith, the acting teacher who discovered Samantha Morton. It was while he was there that Shane Meadows came to cast for This Is England in 2004. He gave Jack his first role on a project that became an awards-winner and hugely influential to British cinema. ‘I was about 14 and suddenly I’ve got a BAFTA-winning film to my name,’ he marvels. Quite the trip for a kid from an industrial town in the north of England where working at the Rolls Royce or Bombardier plant was the usual ambition.

Jack O’Connell, Back To Black, Hollywood Authentic, Greg Williams

‘I just grew up there, playing football and doing all the normal stuff. My mum and dad worked every hour of the day. My mum had two jobs and still had bailiffs coming around. I remember the bailiffs coming and nabbing our TV. I was halfway through watching Pingu, and they fucking nabbed the TV. I remember my mum having to be really crafty with how she’d get food on the table and whatnot. And that was despite my dad working his arse off. He worked himself into the ground.’ The death of his dad at the age of 18 is something that still informs the 33-year-old today. ‘In terms of my relationship with him, I never got to speak to him as an adult, which is the biggest bereavement I still feel. With that kind of loss, you never get over it. You just cope. I had 18 years with a fine, fine man. I know lads that never even had a day with theirs. So it is what it is. But he got to see the start of where I was getting to with work.’

Shane Meadows has continued to be influential in Jack’s career as he recently turned his hand to directing a music video for Paul Weller. ‘I loved the shooting experience, then I got into the edit and was petrified, because suddenly I’ve got all this material, and I don’t know where it’s going, and I don’t know if it’s going to work. So I reached out to Shane; I hadn’t spoken to him in years. I told him what the score was, and he was like, “Oh, Jack, whenever I finish my gig, I feel like I’ve just won the award. And then I get into the edit, and I want to do myself in.” When you’re an actor, if it’s shit, you just blame the director. This time round, I had no one to blame, so it was on me.’

Jack’s latest acting work cast him opposite Marisa Abela as the two of them inhabit Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil in Back to Black. Filming on location in the couple’s real-life stomping ground of Camden, Jack was reunited with Bob – a dog he’d befriended previously while acting in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in the West End in 2018. As we head out to walk the dog, he tells me of their sliding doors moment. ‘I was shooting at the Dublin Castle pub in all my Blake garb. And who should walk past? It’d been about a year-and-a-half or two years. Bless him, he remembered.’ Now Jack borrows Bob for walks and hangouts from his owner, Lisa, when he has downtime between film shoots. Back to Black was a special project, he says, as we stroll the rain-slicked local streets to his favourite coffee shop. ‘I loved it, mate. Marisa was spellbinding. She threw everything at it. She was in every scene, it was heavy for her. I just really respected the work rate and the process.’ In preparation for the role, Jack met up with Blake, an experience he describes as something of a revelation. ‘His persona’s very public. He’s got plenty written about him in the tabloids. You think you’ve got the measure of someone based on what’s out there. I think he’s been vilified. And compared to the fella I met – I just got on with him. I was quite surprised.

Your best tools are your ears, and what you hear, and what you play off. You do a scene three or four times, and there’s gonna be a different nuance

It just felt like I had a lot in common with him. Any time he talked about Amy, it just rang true – and you can forgive being beguiled at that age. The kind of limelight that both of them ended up in… That meeting informed me a lot.’

As we arrive at Jack’s local coffee house I ask how he chooses his roles. ‘There’s jobs that you get, and there’s jobs that you chase, you know? It’s a bit of the law of attraction. There’s such a thing as just eating a bit of humble pie, and putting your hat in the ring. Even if you get fucking ignored, blanked and rejected, you know, not everything is just going to come your way. So I’m reaching out a lot more. I’m interested in being versatile.’ Before we can discuss further we’re welcomed warmly by Rodrigo, a barista from Naples, and we get chatting about football, Maradona and Paolo Sorrentino as Jack gets his coffee on the house. The two of them sing Napoli football songs together in Italian.

We move on to the local butchers, cups warming our hands, in search of a treat for Bob. As a proud northern working-class man, Jack recognises a certain pre-judgement operates in getting roles. ‘Do you think if I had a posh accent I would have a bigger career?’ he asks. ‘What I’m trying to understand – it’s bigger than myself, and my career – is that, do you get to have really good, aspirational jobs if you didn’t go to private school?’ Does he have a point? Though he’s played a wide range of roles, eras and accents with a diverse roster of helmers (including Michael Mann on Ferrari, Angelina Jolie on Unbroken, Jodie Foster on Money Monster), it’s interesting that there have been more American directors who have seen beyond his background. There are still ‘invisible lines and glass ceilings in play’ says the actor.

Jack has worked across TV, film and theatre – so which is his favourite space to get hooked on? ‘To use a cliché, film’s a director’s medium and TV is a producer’s. On TV you’re allowed more time to tell a story in a series, but you’re shooting fucking seven to eight pages in a day. Whereas, with film, obviously there’s always restraints as it relates to budget and what have you, but you can be a bit more focused. Your best tools are your ears, and what you hear, and what you play off. You do a scene three or four times, and there’s gonna be a different nuance to react to.’

His love of cinema is both as a practitioner and a punter, and as we stroll past his local picturehouse I ask him what role in any film he would have liked to have got stuck into. ‘The first one that’s coming to my head is American Psycho and Patrick Bateman. But I just think that what Christian Bale did with that is untouchable. And Jud in Kes. Sid in Sid and Nancy. That’d be the top three there.’ We nip into the retro cinema Jack describes as a ‘little viewing glass into yesteryear’ where he tells me over a Coke that he never watches his own work on a big screen alongside an audience. ‘I just watch at home, in the comfort of your own living room. So if you need to self-flagellate, you can just do it, in privacy! But there’s got to be a childlike curiosity to what you do. You know, when a toddler is playing, they’re not scared of how they’re looking, or if they’re getting it wrong. There’s a freedom to it. We lose it – the innocence, the fucking vigour, the fearlessness. To a toddler, fear doesn’t exist – the fear of getting it wrong; the fear of looking silly. But I think that’s got to be part of the process, isn’t it? You’ve got to be given room to fail. What’s borne out of that is what’s worth mining for. It’s the oxymoron of trying to be but not act. That’s always the goal. The best example I’ve got, which is lived in, is working with Shane Meadows. The cameras didn’t come out until the afternoon. He just spent the morning figuring it out. He didn’t know the story until he got into the edit. So we didn’t know. We were just there.’

Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
Jack O’Connell can be seen in Back to Black, out now

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