Josh O'Connor

• 1. Introduction

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  Josh O'Connor is an English actor, born on the 20th of May 1990, who once delivered more than 150 lambs while preparing for a single film role. He was not chasing a stunt. He was learning how a Yorkshire sheep farmer works, moves and carries himself. That film was God's Own Country, and it set him on one of the more unusual paths in recent British acting. He has since played a prince, a zombie, a Romeo and a priest. How did a boy from Gloucestershire come to act at all? What draws him toward roles that other performers might pass over? And what does he do when the cameras stop?

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• 2. Cheltenham Roots

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  John and Emily O'Connor raised their three sons first in Newbury, then in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, after Josh turned five. His father was a teacher and his mother a midwife. Josh is the middle son, and the family was Catholic.

  Art ran through the household. His grandfather was the sculptor John Bunting, his grandmother was a ceramicist, and his maternal aunt is the writer and commentator Madeleine Bunting. His ancestry is Irish, English and Scottish. Through a great-grandmother on his mother's side, it is also Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish.

  As a child he hoped to become a professional artist, but he did not think he was good enough. He tried rugby instead, and then found acting. At seven he played the scarecrow in a school production of The Wizard of Oz. A minor part in Bugsy Malone followed. The cast of that Bugsy Malone at St Edward's School also included a classmate named Tahliah Barnett, who later became the singer FKA Twigs.

  He attended the private co-educational school during the week. On weekends he spent much of his time at the Axiom, a local arts centre. When he was eleven, the Axiom closed. He traces his political awakening to the loss he felt around him, even though he grew up in a Labour-supporting household.

  He also credits the school's drama programme with helping him live with dyslexia, especially while he prepared for his GCSEs. He then trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and graduated in 2011. During his third year there he signed with an agent, and afterwards he moved to London. He remains proud of growing up outside the capital, in a town with a strong tradition of regional theatre.

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• 3. Early Stage and Screen

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  In 2012 O'Connor made his television debut as Charlie Stephenson in Lewis. That same year he appeared on film as a zombie in The Eschatrilogy: Book of the Dead.

  The following year brought a run of small parts. He was Piotr in Doctor Who, Rob Fellows in Law & Order: UK, Dodd in The Wipers Times and James in London Irish. He also played Andy in The Magnificent Eleven.

  On stage in 2013, he was cast as Ben Fowles in Beau Willimon's Farragut North at the Southwark Playhouse. It was his first professional play. The Independent wrote: "O'Connor delivers a comic gem of a performance." That notice led to Peter Gill's 2014 play Versailles at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden, London. There he played Hugh, a young soldier returning home.

  In 2014 he also appeared as James in Peaky Blinders and as PC Bobby Grace in Ripper Street. After a year and a half of auditioning, he won the part of Ed, a Bullingdon toff, in The Riot Club. Lone Scherfig directed that adaptation of Laura Wade's play Posh. His castmates included Sam Claflin, Douglas Booth, Max Irons, Freddie Fox, Ben Schnetzer and Olly Alexander.

  In 2015 he starred opposite his then-girlfriend Hannah Murray in Bridgend. Jeppe Rønde's film is a dark, fictional portrait of a real Welsh town with an alarmingly high rate of teen suicide. He also played Rich in The Program, Stephen Frears's film about the cyclist Lance Armstrong.

  With the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played Rowland Lacy in Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday. He was also Luis Alvarez in Tom Morton-Smith's Oppenheimer, at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. In 2016 he took over the role of Donaghy in Florence Foster Jenkins, with Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant. From 2016 to 2019 he played Larry Durrell in ITV's comedy-drama The Durrells, which ran to 26 episodes for him. A far quieter and riskier film was waiting in 2017.

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• 4. God's Own Country

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  At the Sundance Film Festival, a small British drama about a young sheep farmer premiered to critical acclaim. In God's Own Country, directed by Francis Lee, O'Connor played Johnny Saxby. To prepare, he worked alongside a Yorkshire farmer and laboured in the fields between takes. He wanted the right techniques and the right physicality.

  He also experimented with method acting. He described to Interview magazine how he kept a personal collection of paintings, drawings and ideas, and worked with Lee on how Johnny would look. The cost was high. In his words: "By the end of the film I was so skinny; I was gaunt. It was horrific." He added: "You isolate yourself from all your friends." He said he would not do it again.

  The performance won him the British Independent Film Award for Best Actor and the Empire Award for Best Male Newcomer. He was also nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award.

  In 2018 he starred opposite Laia Costa in Only You, Harry Wootliff's directorial debut, which premiered in competition at the London Film Festival. It earned him a second British Independent Film Award for Best Actor. In 2019 he played Marius Pontmercy in the British television adaptation of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.

  He also played Jamie in Hope Gap, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. It brought him the Best Actor award at the Barcelona-Sant Jordi International Film Festival. Hope Gap had a limited theatrical release before arriving digitally in May 2020, by which time his most famous role was already on screens.

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• 5. Playing Prince Charles

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  Olivia Colman, Tobias Menzies and Helena Bonham Carter were his co-stars when O'Connor joined Season 3 of The Crown in 2019 as Charles, Prince of Wales. He has said the part did not interest him at first. He had to be persuaded even to audition.

  Creator Peter Morgan asked him to read a scene in which Charles compares himself to a character in Saul Bellow's 1944 novel Dangling Man. That character waits to be drafted because war will give his life meaning. What finally hooked O'Connor was the "aimlessness and purposelessness of Charles's life as heir to the throne".

  In 2020 he was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actor for that first season. The cast also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

  He returned for Season 4 and admitted that his character comes across as "horrible" there. Even so, he understood the root of Charles's discontent. In his view, it boils down to a man who has spent his entire life being overlooked.

  The performance received universal acclaim. It won him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama, and the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series. He was also nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor and for the Screen Actors Guild Award for a male actor in a drama series. The cast won its second ensemble award from the Screen Actors Guild. O'Connor called the whole journey "the experience of a lifetime."

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• 6. After The Crown

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  Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma gave O'Connor a lighter assignment in 2020, as the clergyman Mr. Elton. In 2021 he played Romeo in the Royal National Theatre's television film of Romeo and Juliet. He also played Paul Sheringham in Mothering Sunday, a film about class divides and postwar survivor's guilt in 1924, alongside Olivia Colman and Colin Firth.

  In 2021 it was announced that he would reunite with Francis Lee on a horror film with themes of "class and queerness". He also appeared in Lee, directed by Ellen Kuras and starring Kate Winslet. That Second World War drama premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.

  Luca Guadagnino's Challengers, with Zendaya and Mike Faist, was first due at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. The 2023 writers' and actors' strike postponed it, and it was released in 2024. His other recent work includes the crime drama La chimera in 2023 and the heist drama The Mastermind in 2025.

  At the 78th Cannes Film Festival, he premiered The History of Sound, a First World War love story directed by Oliver Hermanus. He starred opposite Paul Mescal, and the film reached the United States in September 2025. He also hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live in 2025.

  In 2024 it was announced that he had joined Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out film, directed by Rian Johnson. It was released on the 12th of December 2025. In November 2024 he also joined Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day, which was set for release in the summer of 2026.

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• 7. Craft and Collaborators

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  Francis Lee, who directed God's Own Country, calls O'Connor "one of those rare actors that is a real shape-shifter". Others who have worked with him reach for comparisons beyond acting.

  Peter Morgan compared him to Andrés Iniesta, the former Barcelona midfielder, whose skill was enormous but never showy. On casting O'Connor as Prince Charles, Morgan said: "I was drawn to his sensitivity and the fact that he was complex but likable."

  Olivia Colman praised the tenderness he brought to the screen and his ability to inhabit a character completely. She said: "Fragility, sparkle, strength, doubt: It's all there in a second. Every scene we had together became my favorite scene."

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• 8. Swims, Causes, and Home

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  Roger Deakin's book Waterlog and his own mother's example inspired O'Connor's Waterlogged initiative. His mother swam 60 times in her 60th year. He set out to make 30 swims around the UK and Ireland in his 30th year, raising money for Mind, a mental health charity working across England and Wales.

  In January 2020 he visited the Stars Appeal with Olivia Colman. The charity aims to improve patients' experience at Salisbury District Hospital. In December 2020 he and Emma Corrin offered their company for tea in prize draws supporting War Child UK's Torn From Home appeal. In March 2021 he starred in a Loewe campaign shot in the Baja California desert. For every sale from the collection, 15 euros was pledged to Fundación Global Nature, a charity protecting endangered wildlife.

  Politically, he supports the Labour Party and campaigned for Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 general election. He calls himself a "liberal left-winger". On the monarchy he has said: "I'm a republican, although not in any kind of fist-waving, campaigning way. I was always mostly uninterested in them." Speaking to The New York Times in 2020, he said he had huge respect for Queen Elizabeth II. He described Charles as someone who has "literally been waiting his entire life for this moment that still hasn't come." In September 2025 he signed an open pledge with Film Workers for Palestine, refusing to work with Israeli film institutions it describes as implicated in genocide and apartheid.

  He once lived in a Victorian house in Shoreditch and spent a spell in New York with a former partner. In 2023 he moved back to Gloucestershire and bought a house near the town of Stroud. He enjoys reading, drawing, camping, swimming, embroidering, making ceramics and gardening. As of 2025, he is dating the Irish actress Alison Oliver.

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