Owen Cooper

Source: Peter Searle / Screen International

Owen Cooper

“A lot of waiting around, a lot of shooting,” says 15-year-old Owen Cooper about his recent work, barely suppressing a sigh. His breakthrough role in Netflix’s Adolescence caught entire episodes in a single shot; traditional shooting schedules have felt glacial by comparison.

Still, he is not complaining: professional acting has been a dream for the once football-mad kid. Cooper joined Manchester’s The Drama Mob in 2021 and was bitten by the acting bug. Just as he started to worry about getting work, he was cast in Adolescence as accused murderer Jamie Miller, a role that landed him a Primetime Emmy earlier this month — and the badge of the youngest ever male winner.

Casting directors have been calling steadily. Cooper appears as an annoying neighbour to Aimee Lou Wood (“hilarious”) in BBC3’s comedy series Film Club, and plays the younger Heathcliff to Jacob Elordi’s adult in Emerald Fennell’s Warner Bros-backed Wuthering Heights. “He would come on set and watch my mannerisms,” says Cooper of Elordi. “I didn’t have much of an accent change, just little twangs, but his accent is unbelievable. Emerald was lovely but the journey I go through is dark; there’s bits of the script I’m not allowed to read because I’m underage. But it’s a different way of dark from Jamie.”

Now Cooper dreams of playing a hero, perhaps in a horror movie, and wants to emulate Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhaal or Al Pacino. But the most important thing is working, and no more waiting around. “By Wuthering Heights I was pretty used to the new camera system — or the normal camera system. Now I need to get back on set dead quick before I lose it all.”

Contact: Maddi Bonura, Independent Talent 

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