With a career built on quiet intensity and emotional nuance, Josh O’Connor has emerged as one of the most compelling actors of his generation. This piece reflects on the craft and subtle magnetism behind his greatest performances.
Josh O’Connor may be the premier talent of his generation. Chameleonic and self-assured in his work, O’Connor can pull off sincerity and cruelty, vulnerability and confidence, silence and bombasticness from film to film. Assisted by his idiosyncratic look (large ears and keen eyes make an actor do), O’Connor has paved a peculiar path for himself as a screen actor, always working against type and always finding a way for his talent to shine. From prestige TV to indie cinema, O’Connor has never been shy about any character. He adapts each one with confidence, gravitas, and true ownership.
O’Connor never thought he would be an actor. In his teens, he dreamed of being a studio artist (inspired by his grandfather, John Bunting– a ceramist), yet O’Connor found himself drawn to the stage. His first major role was at the ripe age of seven, as the scarecrow in a school production of The Wizard of Oz. What followed was years’ worth of honing his craft on the stage, at the Axiom, a local arts centre. The closing of this arts center was a massive loss for O’Connor, who states that the programme helped him live with his dyslexia for many years, especially when preparing for his GCSEs. O’Connor signed with an agent in his third year at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Because he was raised on the stage, O’Connor came to the screen with a deep-rooted physicality and emotional clarity. His early television work included guest spots on ‘Lewis,’ ‘Law & Order: UK,’ and ‘Doctor Who,’ representing his appeal to British audiences and his understanding of iconography. His characters were often soft-edged but observant, men quietly watching the world tilt around them. These smaller roles built the scaffolding for O’Connor’s eventual Breakthrough, as they hinted at his natural restraint. What separated him even more was a kind of deliberate inwardness; a knack for portraying young men who don’t say much but feel everything.
By the time O’Connor starred as Johnny Saxby in Francis Lee’s ‘God’s Own Country’ (2017), he had completely internalized the grammar of cinema acting. His performance as the emotionally barricaded young Yorkshire farmer is a landmark for queer cinema and rural British filmmaking alike. Working in grueling conditions, O’Connor physically transformed for the role and acquired new skills (including birthing over 150 lambs between takes to better understand his character). The performance is almost wordless in places, yet brimming with tension. Johnny is clenched like a fist until love pries him open. For his efforts, O’Connor won the British Independent Film Award for Best Actor and planted a flag as someone who could carry an entire film on quiet devastation alone.
It is easy to forget, with all the acclaim and awards that followed, that O’Connor initially was not interested in playing Prince Charles on ‘The Crown.’ It took showrunner Peter Morgan’s suggestion– telling O’Connor that Charles was like the protagonist of the novel Dangling Man, waiting for war to give his life meaning– to persuade the young actor. What O’Connor unlocked in Charles was not just insecurity, but a deep, aching longing for agency, a frustration that came at the expense of his wife, Princess Diana. Trapped in the gilded cage of royal duty, O’Connor’s Charles is a man brimming with unexpressed wants. He plays Charles like a manchild, always five seconds from cracking.
In Season 3, O’Connor’s portrayal is defined by an ever-bubbling restraint. But by Season 4, when the romance (and eventual fallout) with Lady Di takes center stage, O’Connor lets the seams rip open. He is bitter, petty, yet somehow, still a little heartbreaking. One minute, his Charles towers in anger; the next, he is a boy in a man’s suit. This is what O’Connor does best: he does not play characters, he unearths them.
The awards soon followed: an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and Critics’ Choice, and more. Olivia Colman, who played Queen Elizabeth II, said of O’Connor to Variety: “Fragility, sparkle, strength, doubt: It’s all there in a second.” His ability to collapse and compose himself within the same breath is O’Connor’s signature.
While ‘The Crown’ elevated him to international recognition, O’Connor refused to coast on this prestige. His post-Charles career has become a study in range. In ‘Emma.’ (2020), he skewers 19th-century etiquette with a performance full of comedic verve as the sanctimonious Mr. Elton. He plays the clergymean like a man with too much self-regard and not much self-awareness, leaning into physical comedy and boyish arrogance in a way that surprised anyone expecting another brooding prince.
Later, in the National Theatre’s televised Romeo & Juliet, he returned to Shakespeare with aching vulnerability. His Romeo is youthful and sincere but haunted, one foot and love and the other in tragedy. Then came ‘Mothering Sunday’ (2021), where he played Paul Sheringham, a damaged aristocrat grieving his brother’s death. The film is bathed in postwar malaise, and O’Connor fills the screen with emptiness, his performance one of spectral sorrow and class guilt.
In 2024’s ‘Challengers,’ O’Connor takes another detour, this time into sex, ego, and power. Playing the rakish tennis extraordinaire Patrick opposite Zendaya’s Tashi and Mike Faist’s Art, O’Connor is frenetic, dangerous, and unhinged. Here, he weaponizes his charm and embraces his distinctive looks. Patrick is magnetic not because he is likable, but because O’Connor plays him like someone who is always selling you something. The confidence he wears in ‘Challengers’ is a far cry from Johnny Saxby or Prince Charles, because O’Connor refuses to repeat himself.
O’Connor is a performer whose work inspires adoration within the industry, someone who transforms without flash, who works without vanity. Francis Lee called O’Connor “a real shape-shifter.” Peter Morgan likened him to footballer Andrés Iniesta: massive but unobtrusive skill.
O’Connor’s face tells a hundred stories, even in silence. His eyes are soft, alert, and scheming if need be. He has a look that both invites and deflects. His ears stick out. His smile is crooked. He is intensely watchable because he is always acting, always making choices, even in stillness.
He can be funny (‘Emma.’), tender (‘La Chimera’), vicious (‘The Crown’), cocky (‘Challengers’), and aching (‘God’s Own Country’), often all within the same role. While he has dabbled in method acting, he has never let the process get in the way of presence. He believes in prep but also instinct. He builds his characters from the outside in, often sketching, drawing, and compiling notebooks to understand them physically and emotionally.
There is also a class consciousness to O’Connor’s choices. From the shuttering of his childhood arts center to his roles in ‘God’s Own Country,’ ‘Challengers,’ and ‘Mothering Sunday,’ O’Connor gravitates toward characters shaped by structural barriers, men wrestling with masculinity, with inheritance, with class. He chooses roles that probe at the systems that make men cruel and confused, restrained and reckless.
Even as his star rises, O’Connor continues to make surprises and promising choices. He is set to appear in Rian Johnson’s ‘Wake Up Dead Man,’ the third installment in the ‘Knives Out’ franchise. It is his first big studio ensemble since ‘The Riot Club,’ but with Johnson’s whip-smart writing and a likely wicked role, expect O’Connor to bite into it with relish.
More intriguingly, he’s set to star opposite Paul Mescal in ‘The History of Sound,’ a tender WWI love story from director Oliver Hermanus. It is a return to queer romance and emotioanl interiority. O’Connor has also signed onto ‘The Mastermind,’ a new film from auteur director Kelly Reichardt, starring opposite Alana Haim. He follows the work, wherever it leads.
In a cinematic landscape defined by so much noise (from explosions, to clickable monologues, to spectacle), Josh O’Connor’s stillness stands apart. His performances earn your attention. He is an actor who listens, reacts, and breathes. There is power in his restraint in the way he lets characters unfold rather than announce themselves. Whether he is a lonely farmer, a very flawed prince, or a smug tennis star, O’Connor never shows his hand too early. He lets the quiet do the heavy lifting. With each role, O’Connor seems to ask us not to look at him, but with him. He is not in search of fame, but a feeling. It makes him an equal part movie star and craftsman, and he is one of the best we have.
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