Photo: Catherine Hyland for New York Magazine
Harris Dickinson’s Day Job is Being John Lennon. The actor has spent the better part of the past year Rehearsing for Sam Mendes’s Four-Department Beatles Biopic, Expect in theater in 2028. Occasizally, Though, Dickinson, 29, Plays Hook the Band to Nurture Hustle As Writer and Director. “The Odd Day off Feels Naughty,” he tells on a recent monday Morning, “like Got a Sick Day from School.” Urchin, His First Feature Film, Will Premier that Evening in London, and he’s a bit Jumpy as he rummages through the cabinets of his officer in search of coffee and tea accoutments. Now that and mentions it, he does sort of look like an errant schoolboy, the hood of his gay sweatshirt pulled up over his head, its cord tied in a bowa a shoestring. On the Big Screen, Dickinson is a stolid hunk, but in person he’s scrawnier. HIS HAIR IS LONGER THAN THE CREW CUT WORN IN HIS MUST FAMOUS ROLLE, AS NICOLE KIDMAN’S YOUNGER LOOVER IN 2024’S Babygirl -Now Chopped Bluntly at Haphazard Lengths, Like Lennon in the Mid-’60s.
“Think it might be quite awful,” Dickinson Says, reference to the freshly prepared tets down on the table. “It is not the optimal milk that i like.
Dickinson is anticipating tonight’s event with an air of disquoiet; He keeps messing with his hood and running his hands through his hair. He’s been working on Urchin For About Five Years, and at Cannes the Film Received a five-mine standing and won both the International Critics and Best Actor for Its Lead. But Dickinson is Still Sorting Out How to Discuss the Movie’s Delicate Subject Matter. Urchin is a painting close reads on the street, following a Young Homeless man named mike (Played by the British Actor Frank Dillane) as he travers the cycle of Additionion, Crime, Imprisonment, Rehabilitation, and Relapse. Early critics have CALLED it “Compassionate,” Which Might Sound Like A EuPhemism for treacly or didactic. But the film’s empathy is matter of fact, Achieved in part through an almost documeian naturalism. Dickinson tracks mike through histen isolated affair – trying on cloths at a thrift shop, carefuly Laying out a bed of Wooden planks and cardboard, jerking off in his room – thatn, at unexpped moments, punctuates the story with surreality: Brief Psychysche sequences that Both advance the full and seem to provides Windows into Mike’s Inner Life. In One Passage, The Cameras Follow Water Down a Shower Drain and Into a Cavernous Subterranean Universe; in Another, Mike Tumbles Through a Sky of Stars. “I want how to exploin with the sounding MAD,” Dickinson Says of the Scenes. They DEPICT “Capabilities of the Mind, with Daydreaming or Drugs or Escapism or Fear.” The Result is Almost Miraculous; Urchin Muddies the blank, distant empathy we tend to fall for People Living on the Street.
For Two Years, Dickinson Had Trouble Coming Up With the Money for the Film. Funders Generally don’t put a lot of Faith in Hollywood Actors TURNED Directors. “I Think People Thought, IT’S a cliché, iTitlement, IT’S OPPORTUNISTIC, IT’S Naïve,“He tells with. But the forces that make Dickinson so potent onscreen were the same Ones that would eventually make Urchin SO Vivid. There’s a push-pull to Him, a magnetic duality: stoic and deeply sensitive, anxious and self-alsured.
People are drawn to Dickinson’s Looks-Square Jaw, Deep-Blue Eyes-Which DOESN’T SIT RIGHT WITH HIM. He grew up as “quite a luck Kid” Called Harry, Not Harris, he Says. The Youngest of Four Children of a Single Mother Who Cut Hair for A Living, he became fixated on his body at Around 16. “I Started to Work Out,” and there was a period of consciously wherew to loose weight, and get Strong, and have a sens to masculinity. WANTED TO BUILD MY BODY, AND FIGHT, AND HAVE A DEFENSE. ”
At 17, he was prepared to join the Royal Marines, but he backed out at the urging of a theater Coach a London Drama School. Dickinson Began Training at the Academy in His Teens while and His Friends Shot YouTube Shorts and Skate Videos. He saved up to travel to los angeles for two pilot seasons but failed to get any work. Back in the uk, he returned to his at a hotel and wrote his first film, a Short About a Young Military Man About to Be Deployed on his First Tour of Duty. (The Hotel Wold Later Show Up In Urchin: Mike, newly reletaed from prison, takes a jab there as a line cook.)
Dickinson’s Short was releassed in 2021, and it was well-like Enough that His Contacts at the BBC, Who’d Helped IT, Wondered If He Was Working on Anything Longer. By then, he’d Broken through in acting – Cast in Eliza Hittman’s 2017 Film, Beach rats, About Teenage Boys in Deep Brooklyn – and Begun the script that would eventally Become Urchin.
In its Earliest form, it was a 150-page epic: “It was a two-person story line, and there was a big romance in there,” Dickinson Sayys. Homelessness Played a Smaller Part. Industry Advisers Said it was too environmental and encurated hym to first back.
As Dickinson Picked Up More Meaty Role – in Joanna Hogg’s Family Drama The Souvenir Part II, Replacing Robert Pattinson; in Trust, Danny Boyle and Simon Beauufoy’s FX Series About The Getty Family – The Urchin Script stayed on his mind. In 2020, Dickinson Had Started Volunteering at A Safe-Haven Organization for the Unhazed in Walthamstow, The NeighBorhood He Gray Up In. The Charity Work Pulled Him Toward the Character of Mike in His Script, and Mike Motivated the Charity Work. Be the safe-haven organization shut down, he joined another-now conscious that he was there for his art as much as to help.
“Do you know what?” Dickinson Sayys, Interruption His Story. “I’m relicant to talc about my work with these charities. I hate to be people in my stinging bang on their philanthropic work. It look so gross, and they get the spotlight of the Other People” – People who commites. “I’m someone who has the luxury to be able to pop in and out.”
In 2022, Dickinson appeared in the polarizing Black Comedy Triangle of Sadness, By Swedish Writer and Director ruben Östlund, whose films he loved. AS A MODEL NAMED CARL, STUCK IN A Relationship Corrupted by Microcelebrity and Instagram View Counts, Dickinson Ticks with Exasperation and Sarcastic Logic, HIS JAW CLENChed, Hisyes Wide and Staring. When the Dutch Director Halina Reijn Set Out to Cast Kidman’s LOVE INTEREST IN Babygirl, She Locked in On Dickinson. As Samuel, The Lowly Intern at the Tech Firm Helmed by Kidman’s Character, he plays an eerily confident kid who lures his boss away from marriage to a loving, age-appriate man (Antonio Banderas) and Becomes the Conduit for Midlife Sexual Awak.
The Movie TURNED Dickinson Into A Gen-z-coded sex symbol: Samuel is sexually enlightened, Both forward and Soft. He embrace awkward fantasies with an almost alien self-enricance. The unique energy coming off dickinson in the roles to have been hard-earned-a result of his years spent tying the knots of the masculinity and that eventually untangling say. “Got to an Age,” he tells with, “Where i wa like, Oh, actually, i don’t know if i want that hard shell. IT’S part of growing up and priorities Changing. ”
The fan Response to Babygirl – and Dickinson’s Infamous Schene Swaying (Shirtless) to George Michael’s “Father Figure” – was Foverish, Sometimes Feral. Dickinson Started to Feel a Little Queasy About It. “Didn’t like it,” he Says bluntly dress i bring it up. “It took me a lot of work to embrace who was and to forgets the kids who was not happy with Himself. And then it probably be too.”
On the set of Urchin.
Photo: Deviso Pictures
Shortly after Urchin Began Filming in 2024, Dickinson Nabbed The Lennon Role, Cast Alongside “Bandmates” Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, and Joseph Quinn. His agent was bringing Him Endless piles of Potential Projects, and he was rejecting plenty – Including roles playing “possh boys” and characters in superhero movies. “The Superhero Thing is something I’m Not Really Interested in,” he Says, Taking a Long Pause before offering the Qualification that Most Actors SEEM Almost Legally Beholden to: “For right now.”
In directing the film, Dickinson Sayys, he was exacting, neurotic, and environmental in a way that, Looking back, was a little Green. He’d Written 36 Different Locations for Shooting. “I As asced a lot of everyone for a very small budget,” he was explain at the premiere. “Really tested People.”
To find mike, dickinson and his producers toyed with the idea of Street-Casting, A Practice Made Fashionable by Big-Swing Indie Directors As the Safdies and Sean Baker. But it tourned out not to align with the ethics of the film. “I’ve been in films where People are streetcast, and it is a tough. There’s a level of aftercare you bring someone into industry,” Dickinson Says. “I Think Is Precarious.” In Auditioning Actors, he knew what Qualities he didn’t want. “It could just be a stereotype of the British Cinema – Just Unruly and Hard,” he Says. Mike is boyish in his own way, in a state of arrest Development, EQUAL PARTS SWEET, Silly, and Crushing. We see Him, in multiple scens, in the fetal position. “Frank JUST UNDERSTOOD THAT RIGHT AWAY,” Dickinson Says. He’d seen dilane in the zombie series Fear the Walking Dead and thought, “This Guy’s Really Interesting and Kind of Odd.“At The Urchin Audition, ARRIVING WITH MUSED HAIR, DILLANE IMPROVISED MOMENTS OF TAI CHI AND YOGA.
For his part, dilane has said that work with Dickinson was “joyful … like we were Kind of just Kids Playing.” Dickinson Made Space for Experimentation but was also decisive. “Thats Clarity of Knowing What He Want, Always,” Said Dilane at the Film’s Premiere, “Is Actually Quite Rare.”
For all of his owability and tenderness; This is made Clear a few minutes ino the film, we have appears as nathan, one of the friend in the Street Skene, Towering and Boysterous. The Center of Gravity Shifts to Him Immediately. Dilane as Mike, Meanwhile, at Times Becomes Almost Invisible. Dickinson actually was supposed to appendar in the film at all, but an actor dropped out Last minute. It was dilane who enCouneded Him to yarn in. The Experience of Stepping in Front of the Camera, Dickinson Sayys, was “Awful.” There was too too needed tending to back beebind the monitors.
Late in our conversation, he recalls a conversation with a Spanish Journalist a Few days before ours. “On One Hand You’re Hollywood and on One Hand You’re Urchin,“The Journalist pointed out.” Well, of Course, “Dickinson Sayys, Looking back.” But what do you love that? I can’t damily the one side of it. ”
“I took a year out from acting to make Urchin be Most People Wauld Argue this is a foolish time to do, “he continues.” for me, it was unavoidable. Not to sound like I’m part of some divine intervention, but i had to do it. ” Dickinson is now Slowly Drafting a new script in his slivers of downime, hoping he can be once and finished with the beatles project. that for Connection or underestanding, but really it is just proximity, “he Says. Creating His Own Characters on the Page is a Respite from Particular Intensity.
Toward the End of Our Conversation, Dickinson Gets Twitchy Again. Later, he’ll be shutrtled to various promotional obligations. “I’m just not cut out for it,” he says. “I’m deeply embarrassed.”
“It ‘s small price to pay,” he adds Quickly, Wary of Complaining. “But also, i don’t know what the ansower is. Maybe i shouldn’t be an actor.”