“Be down in a minute!” a cheery voice crackles through the intercom. It’s a balmy late July afternoon in east London, and I’ve just rung the buzzer of an old schoolhouse, now a hub of offices for fashion types. Within moments, the rangy 29-year-old actor Harris Dickinson bounds down an exterior staircase and shakes my hand. “Did you come far?” he asks.
We’re a few miles away from the London film industry hub of Soho, in a low-key neighborhood of modish restaurants and cafés where Dickinson has situated the office of his production company, Devisio Pictures. He’s practically in camouflage here, in a white T-shirt, cargo pants, and Adidas Sambas, and his office vibe is that of a scrappy but flourishing start-up: potted plants, a kaleidoscopic array of herbal teas on a windowsill, and vintage film posters for E.T. and a Cassavetes retrospective. “I made the first rough cut of Urchin on those,” Dickinson says, pointing toward a pair of giant monitors on a desk in the corner.
Urchin—which Dickinson wrote and directed—premiered just two months before in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, where he processed down the Croisette for the premiere in double-breasted Prada, paparazzi flashbulbs lighting his Modigliani features. We’re a million miles from all that glamour here. “I’d never been so nervous in my life,” Dickinson says, handing me a soda. “I was terrified. I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown 10 minutes before we went into the screening.”
But the reception was ecstatic: Urchin, a deeply affecting drama about a young homeless man in London struggling with addiction and mental health issues, took home both a film critics prize and a best actor prize for its star, Frank Dillane. Dickinson describes the days following as something of a whirlwind—“bonkers,” in his soft London accent—as he and Dillane were overwhelmed by praise and promotional duties. (Though there were breaks, like the Cannes after-hours party at which his girlfriend, pop musician Rose Gray, and their friend Charli XCX took over the DJ decks.) “Regardless of whether people admit it,” Dickinson says of Cannes, “you’re looking for someone to go, ‘Okay, yeah, this worked. You’re not completely mad. This isn’t a useless endeavor.’ So that felt good.”
Dickinson wasn’t the only star making a directorial debut at this year’s festival (Scarlett Johansson and Kristen Stewart also took the plunge). Did he feel the scrutiny—even skepticism—that often meets actors taking over the director’s chair? “For sure, and rightly so,” he says. “But I also read a review that was like, ‘He proves that he can do more than order milk.’ I thought that was such a reductive, dumb fucking headline. I’ve been wanting to make films my whole life, and I’ve earned my stripes in order to get to this place.”
Dickinson broke out in Eliza Hittman’s 2017 indie hit Beach Rats, where he played a wayward Brooklyn teen struggling to come to terms with his sexuality. His talent for expressing a volatile vulnerability and grit saw him through performances as troubled tough guys in Where the Crawdads Sing and The Iron Claw. (His turn as a preening himbo fashion model in Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or–winning social satire Triangle of Sadness, meanwhile, marked an interesting diversion from type.) And then there was his performance opposite Nicole Kidman in last year’s Babygirl: as a young corporate intern attempting, through guile and awkward artlessness (the aforementioned milk-ordering as case in point), to seduce his boss into a BDSM-inflected affair.
Setting acting aside to focus on directing Urchin (from a script he began writing five years ago) was a “weird switch,” he says. As a fast-rising actor from a working-class background in the Highams Park suburb of east London—Dickinson’s mother is a hairdresser and his father a social worker—he spent much of his early career hustling and taking jobs that, “regardless of their artistic importance in the world, were giving me opportunities.” Directing would require a year off. He’d be turning down roles at a moment when the funding for the film was still in flux. But Urchin was a leap of faith. “Something I had to do,” he says. “I couldn’t escape it.”
Dickinson’s directorial ambitions run deep. At 10, he was making skateboarding films on a Sony Handycam. By 14, he was making short films influenced by the social-realist work of filmmakers like Mike Leigh and Shane Meadows. “I would write quite heavy, weighted scripts,” he says, with a touch of embarrassment. Briefly, at the end of high school, he considered joining the Royal Marines, but thanks to the encouragement of a coach at Raw Academy—the local performing arts club he attended—he began auditioning for acting jobs (as well as a trash-collection job and a stint as a sales assistant at Hollister to pay the bills). Acting struck him as more “realistic” than filmmaking. “It felt like something I could go and do with a group of people without spending money or having to get people to help me make my films,” he says.
The years of scrapping for income and work gave him the tenacity he needed to walk into the BBC and pitch his short film, 2003, a powerful portrait of a young man attempting to reconcile with his alcoholic father before heading off on deployment at the eve of the Iraq War. And it was his curiosity about filmmaking more broadly that partly led Halina Reijn to cast him in Babygirl: “I knew he’d written a script and was going to direct it, and an actor who wants to write and direct at that young age intrigued me,” she explains. “I knew he was going to be interested in the whole process.” That fascination was visible in how he ran the Urchin set, says Archie Pearch, a longtime friend and cofounder of Devisio. “I remember on the first week of shooting Urchin, watching someone get something out of a van and then Harris going over to give them a hand,” he says. “There’s no ego.”
That’s probably why the aspect of Urchin Dickinson feels most uncomfortable talking about is that he’s actually in it: playing Nathan, a duplicitous friend of Mike’s from the streets who later finds himself in a transactional romantic relationship with an older woman. This wasn’t planned. The actor Dickinson had cast for the role dropped out a week before they began shooting, and Dillane encouraged him to step in. “I sort of had to call him and be like, ‘Mate, you’ve got to be in this movie,” says Dillane, 34, who is the son of the actors Stephen Dillane and Naomi Wirthner, and who has the same cheeky, effete charm as the film’s protagonist. “You know the character inside out,” Dillane remembers saying, “you know what is required. You’re a great actor.”
When I mention this to Dickinson, he sighs. “I felt like a bit of a dick being in my own film, if I’m honest with you. ‘Here I am, I’ll do it! Fucking jazz hands and all!’ But the role is small enough that it is fine. It disappears. It’s Frank’s film. I wanted Frank to have his moment, deservedly.” It was a five-week shoot on a Lilliputian budget—constraints that Dickinson says he was “energized” by. “My brain loved being that active. I think I’ve been craving that for a long time, that level of engagement and responsibility.” (He also came to enjoy the 9-to-5 routine of editing—going to the office suite to cut the film—and then being back at the east London home he shares with Gray and a British shorthair cat, Misty Blue, in time for dinner.)
For Dickinson, the greater challenge lay in finding the right tone to strike around the film’s sensitive subject matter of homelessness and mental health. Dickinson is a long-time volunteer at a London homeless charity, and while he doesn’t want to bang the drum about it, he does recognize that it’s important he cites that experience as having informed the film. “It’s a tricky one,” he acknowledges. “That work became a part of my routine in order to feel like I was not the useless human being that I am.” His father’s social work career—“he wouldn’t share specific details of his cases,” Dickinson says, “but he’d always spoken about certain patterns and habits of people”—was an inspiration too. “It is important for people to know that I’ve done my due diligence in that world. I very much have an investment in that cause and will continue to.” Indeed, for his Urchin photo-call at Cannes, Dickinson wore a T-shirt aimed at comments made by the former British home secretary, Suella Braverman: “Living on the streets is not a lifestyle choice Suella. It’s a sign of failed government policy.”
“Whatever I can do to try and shout about issues, I’m going to do it,” he says. “It’s not a big deal for me to wear a fucking T-shirt on a beach, you know what I mean? I think we’re getting to a time when people need to be called out. They need to be exposed. We are past the point where politicians get to just get away with stuff.”
We’re into the complex issue of class, and Dickinson represents a dwindling breed of British actor: the kind of working-class leading men like Albert Finney and Terence Stamp—or more recently, James McAvoy and Clive Owen—whose humble beginnings informed the kind of films they signed up to. A 2024 report by Britain’s Labour Party found that nearly half of British nominees for leading cultural awards, including the BAFTAs, were privately educated, and after 14 years of Conservative rule in the UK, sources of arts funding that provide a pipeline for actors of all backgrounds to enter the industries have been dramatically slashed.
When I ask Dickinson about all this, he takes a moment to consider his reply. “You see it a lot,” he says. “You see privilege prop people up in various ways, and I don’t blame anyone for that. But it’s difficult if someone has not got the support network or if they’ve not got the financial means to sustain themselves while they’re trying to build a career in a notoriously, at times, inaccessible industry.” How do filmmakers and artists of any kind sustain themselves while things are waiting to get made? “Or potentially not getting made,” he says. “How does one do any of that without support?”
Those who know Dickinson well or have worked with him return to the same theme: “Humble and very grounded,” says Reijn. “Humble and very kind,” says Pearch. “I trust him implicitly,” says Dillane. “He’s navigated this world so beautifully.” Part of that lies in the way he instinctively maintains his privacy: Though he’s happy to answer any question, his one request (made with the utmost politeness, of course) is that I don’t get too specific about where his office is. He has no issue waxing lyrical about Gray, for instance, whose debut album was released earlier this year to general acclaim; when we meet, he’s quick to tell me she’s over in the US supporting Kesha on tour. “I love gassing her up,” he says, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m her number one fan. When I see Rose up there doing her thing, I’m just in awe of it, really.”
And next up, of course, is Sam Mendes’s epic four-part Beatles film series, in which Dickinson plays John Lennon. Though he’s currently many weeks into rehearsals, he still sounds surprised that he was even cast in the project. “I think when [Sam] came to me and we spoke about the film, I never expected John Lennon to be the person that he said,” Dickinson says. “I think it took me a while to get my head around him as a person to tap into. I think I had immediate imposter syndrome. But Sam has just been phenomenal. He’s such an intelligent, kind man—the best person to do this, and such a fan as well.” How has it been, working with the other three actors: Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, and Joseph Quinn? “Yeah. Yeah.” He considers his words (and probably the NDA) before replying, with a knowing smile: “They’re all right, those guys.”
He’s been working sporadically on a new screenplay, but the Beatles films are consuming most of his time—and likely will until their release in 2028. “I’m writing, but I think my energy works best focused on one thing at a time,” he says. “I’ll write it now, and then hopefully be able to make it after.” This is, in fact, a very rare day off from any type of work. What does that look like for Harris Dickinson? “I’m very lucky. I’ve got a good group of mates that all live in London. We’ll go to the park, have a little drink, go for a little walk, the usual shit, man. Go to the cinema. Very boring.”
So boring, that the reason he has to head off is for a dental appointment. As we leave the office, a pair of young women in Breton tops pause and look up from their lunch, registering the tall, boyish figure leaping down the stairs two at a time. A flash of recognition appears on their faces; then, they return to their lunch, nonplussed. Just a nice guy headed to the dentist.
In this story: Grooming, Liz Taw; tailor, Chloe Cammidge.
Prop Stylist: Miguel Bento. Produced by TOTAL London.
