Jack O’Connell Knows Where He Comes From

In the years since he first came to international attention as the troubled James Cook in the epochal British teen drama Skins, Jack O’Connell has made a name of himself inhabiting a range of intense characters. In his rich career to date, he has portrayed a violent inmate in Starred Up, a British soldier during the Troubles in ’71, the Olympian and World War II prisoner-of-war Louis Zamperini in Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, a hostage taker opposite George Clooney and Julia Roberts in Money Monster, and Amy Winehouse’s husband Blake Fielder-Civil in Back to Black. This year, he faces new supernatural challenges in two major blockbusters, Ryan Coogler’s vampire epic Sinners and the eagerly anticipated zombie sequel 28 Years Later, directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland.

At thirty-four, O’Connell has already amassed an impressive CV, and with the recent release of Sinners to rapturous reviews and a strong box office, he admits he has learned to take the victories as they come. “With something like this, you know, it’s always a leap of faith,” he says. “I’m getting a little long in the tooth now, slightly, and so you know to just soak it all up and enjoy.”

The sheer audacity of this “leap of faith” is a testament to Coogler’s singular artistic vision. Starring Michael B. Jordan as a pair of gangsters who return to their hometown in thirties Mississippi to open a juke joint that summons horrors in the forms of both the KKK and O’Connell’s Irish vampire Remmick, the film is the rare major studio production on this scale with a wholly original story, and one so alluring that Warner Bros. made significant concessions to secure it. Led by the aspiring teenage blues singer and guitarist Sammie (played by newcomer Miles Caton), Sinners is a celebration of musical heritage and culture, a powerful reminder of artistic legacies that also happens to contain some thrillingly violent battles.

O’Connell says he was immediately struck by the originality of the script when he received it mere hours before his first Zoom call with Coogler. “It just blew my mind on the first initial read, but I didn’t have much time to wrap my head around it all before talking to Ryan,” he recalls. “It was just great, that initial meeting, it was instant to me that Ryan and myself, I just felt there was a commonality. Just can’t tell you how thankful I am for meeting that man.” He took the opportunity to question Coogler about Remmick’s Irish background and the inclusion of Irish folk songs and jigging, with which O’Connell was familiar through his father’s family. “You can imagine my surprise reading this script for the first time, but one of the best things about Ryan is anything that you’re inquiring about, he’s not going nowhere until he’s answered it,” the actor adds. “He’ll interrogate it with you until you’ve come to some sort of summation, and that’s an amazing trait to have as a director.”

Those who know O’Connell from his bad boy roles may be surprised to find him singing and dancing on screen, but he admits he’s had enough practice doing both thanks to childhood jigging lessons and the help of a few pints. “It was just a case of tapping back into that, rolling back over twenty years ago, but I thought, ‘Right, okay,’” he laughs. “Plus, I might have been guilty of wheeling it out the odd time in a pub, when the beer’s flowing and the Irish tunes are on. So why not? If you’ve got it, you’re going to. That bit didn’t nerve me too much. It was the singing, to be honest, because it’s not something I have any experience in other than in the bar.”

As a vampire, Remmick is both terrifying and strangely alluring, offering promises of “fellowship and love” and, perhaps most beguiling for the time, a world of unity free of racism. Despite his hunger for blood, there is also something enticing about his emphasis on connection to his ancestors and his community. “He’s a devout believer in the church of Remmick,” O’Connell explains. “It was just finding conviction in that and offering that to his victims as something that they’re going to benefit from. I think it’s beautifully written. There’s so much there on the page anyway that the character becomes clear to you pretty instantaneously. Above all things, in Remmick’s mind, he’s the protagonist of that story. That was a really good ethos in order to portray him.”

That conviction is a common thread through many of O’Connell’s characters, and in the actor himself. Growing up in the Midlands, he was an indifferent student until he found his passion sparked in a compulsory drama class, an increasingly rare opportunity as the English government continues to cut funding for arts education. “I wasn’t great at learning at a desk. I put up with it, but I was more interested in making the class laugh and getting myself sent out the classroom just because I couldn’t concentrate and I was too hell bent on just having a good time and a good laugh,” he recalls. “In drama, that was being encouraged. And obviously there was no desk in a drama class, it was just an hour at least of being expressive and creative. However I’m programmed, I responded to that, and that’s not unique.”

After being accepted to the nearby Television Workshop to continue his acting lessons as a teenager, O’Connell began to dedicate himself to his craft, making the journey down to London for auditions, where he was sometimes unable to afford a place to spend the night. Two decades later, he still marvels at the difficult journey that has led him to where he finds himself today. “It must have just offered me a great outlet for whatever I was trying to express as a kid,” he says. “To think that I’m sat here now as a 34-year-old, still doing it, it’s still my profession, I really have to count my blessings for that, especially considering how rare a trajectory that is nowadays.”

The weekend of Sinners’s release, O’Connell was on a plane to Australia, where he’ll spend the next few months filming the upcoming Godzilla x Kong sequel, one of the largest productions he has starred in yet. “I’ve done one or two projects that felt enormous at the time, and it’s daunting,” he says. “Just even thinking about how much a single take might be costing somebody somewhere, it is daunting. But I think once you get past that and really love what it is, then it’s really freeing.”

As he continues to build a fascinatingly varied career, O’Connell says he is careful to always push himself further with each role. “You’re always considerate of what you’ve just done, what people are about to see, and so that’ll inform your decision making,” he elaborates. “It’s always nice to turn your hand to something new and challenge yourself, where do the challenges lie? I really enjoy having to depart from myself to portray characters. That’s what I’m finding really fulfilling in the work, so that’s what I look for.”

With his performances and projects thus far, it’s clear that O’Connell has the ability and the drive to establish himself as a generational talent. Even as he finds himself starring in several major Hollywood blockbusters, he remains mindful of the challenges he has overcome, a path that feels increasingly out of reach in an industry that is becoming ever more cloistered and exclusive. “To be honest, only very recently have I kind of settled into thinking that, ‘No, hang on, I could be, this is what I do.’ Whether that’s imposter syndrome or whatever, I think when you’re from a working-class background, you’re working twice as hard to get halfway there. And that’s still apparent today,” he emphasizes. “If you’re up for rolling your sleeves up, knuckling down, and defying the odds, that’s great. But that is how it is, and I’ve only seen it get worse over the years. I can’t get complacent. You come from my sort of background, there’s all sorts of opposing factors at play, and you just can’t get complacent. I wasn’t born into it, I didn’t know anybody in the industry, I didn’t have any family ties, so you’re always, always working twice as hard to get half the way there.”

Sinners is now playing in theaters.