From his consecration in Skins to roles in Unbroken, Sinners and 28 Years Later, the English actor arrives in Venice with Ink as his name enters the race to play the next 007.
For a long time Jack O’Connell seemed like the actor destined to become a star without ever fully accepting the rules necessary to be one. Too rough for the classic Hollywood protagonist, too magnetic to remain confined to secondary roles, the English interpreter has built his career through characters crossed by anger, violence and an almost always restrained vulnerability. Today, at 36 years old, cinema finally seems to have found the right way to use that tension: afterwards Sinners And 28 Years LaterO’Connell arrives at the Venice Film Festival as the protagonist of Ink and, at the same time, enters the conversation about Daniel Craig’s possible heir as James Bond.
From Derby to the generation of Skins
Born on 1 August 1990 in Alvaston, Derbyshire, Jack O’Connell grew up in a working-class family with Irish roots. Before imagining a career as an actor he dreamed of football, played as a striker and took some trials for Derby County. However, injuries put an end to that possibility and, for a time, O’Connell even considered the idea of joining the army.
Acting entered his life thanks to the Television Workshop in Nottingham, the school that trained several British performers away from the traditional privileged circuits. After the first appearances in series such as Doctors And The Billmade its cinema debut in 2006 This Is England by Shane Meadows. Popular success came a few years later with Skinswhere he plays James Cook, an impulsive, arrogant and self-destructive teenager who has become one of the most memorable characters in the series.
Cook sticks to him with an almost dangerous precision. O’Connell comes from the same provincial and restless world described by the character and in those years he also built a reputation as a “bad boy” off screen. It will be precisely that proximity to the material of his roles that makes him credible, but also risks trapping him in the role of the young British delinquent.
The films that revealed his talent
The decisive step occurs with Starred Up of 2013, a prison drama in which he plays Eric Love, an extremely violent boy transferred prematurely to an adult prison, where he finds his father. O’Connell offers a physical and unpredictable performance, capable of transforming aggression into a desperate form of communication.
The following year he was the protagonist of ’71set during the Northern Irish conflict. In the role of a young British soldier left isolated on the streets of Belfast, he demonstrates his ability to support the film even by subtracting words and gestures. Also in 2014 Angelina Jolie chose him to play the Olympic athlete and war veteran Louis Zamperini in Unbroken. The film gave him international visibility and in 2015 O’Connell won the BAFTA Rising Star Award.
The consecration, however, did not produce the immediate Hollywood career that many had predicted. They follow very different projects, from Money Monster by Jodie Foster to the western series Godlessuntil Lady Chatterley’s Lover, SAS: Rogue Heroes And Back to Blackwhere he plays Blake Fielder-Civil, Amy Winehouse’s controversial husband. Rather than chasing the role of hero, O’Connell continues to choose difficult, often compromised men, in whom charm and danger become almost indistinguishable.
From Sinners to 28 Years Later
In 2025 Ryan Coogler entrusts him with one of the most surprising characters of Sinners. O’Connell plays Remmick, an Irish vampire who does not simply present himself as a monstrous creature, but as a seducer capable of promising belonging, immortality and the erasure of differences. His apparent kindness makes the character even more disturbing and shows an essential quality of the actor: the ability to suggest a threat without having to constantly display it.
In the same period he enters the universe of 28 Years Later as Jimmy Crystal, a figure destined to take on even greater weight in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. It is a new moment of acceleration for a career which, after years of irregular trajectories, seems to have reached a particularly interesting maturity.
Jack O’Connell is Larry Lamb in Ink
In Venice O’Connell is among the protagonists of Inkthe film directed by Danny Boyle which opens the 83rd edition of the Festival and enters the official competition. Adapted by James Graham from his own play, the film reconstructs the takeover of the British newspaper The Sun by Rupert Murdoch in 1969 and its transformation into a tabloid capable of revolutionizing, and partly degrading, the language of popular information.
Guy Pearce plays Murdoch, while O’Connell plays Larry Lamb, the editor charged with winning over new readers through aggressive headlines, scandals, sex and an increasingly spectacular conception of news. At the center of Ink therefore there is not only the rise of a publishing empire, but the birth of a media model destined to profoundly influence British culture and politics.
It’s a role particularly suited to O’Connell. Larry Lamb is an ambitious and popular man, capable of understanding the public’s instincts but also willing to force them. A character in which charisma cannot be separated from unscrupulousness and which allows the actor to transform his proletarian energy, so distant from the smooth elegance of traditional British acting, into a form of authority.
Will he be the next James Bond?
Just while Ink brings him back to the center of attention, the name of Jack O’Connell has entered the list of possible new James Bonds. According to some rumours, the actor would be among the candidates still being evaluated for the reboot entrusted to Denis Villeneuve, alongside performers such as Callum Turner and other emerging names.
However, O’Connell possesses many of the qualities required by the character. He’s English, he’s the right age to take on the role for several films and knows how to combine physicality, seduction and toughness. Above all, it could offer a less aristocratic and more unpredictable Bond, close in intensity to that of Daniel Craig but without the risk of appearing to be a simple imitation. His 007 wouldn’t need to be polished to perfection: he could retain the accent, the rough edges and that feeling of authentic danger that has accompanied O’Connell since his years as a Skins.
Perhaps this is precisely what makes it a credible choice. Jack O’Connell doesn’t seem like a man who wears a tuxedo to feel important, but someone who might wear it as a cover, hinting at a much less elegant story beneath the surface. And that’s exactly what the next James Bond might need.
