The punk provocateur Dennis Pennis, played by Paul Kaye, once famously asked Demi Moore whether, if it wasn’t gratuitous and it was tastefully done, she would consider keeping her clothes on in a movie. Harris Dickinson chuckles when I bring up that prickly comic encounter during our Zoom conversation. But the question remains: what are the odds that the 24-year-old actor will appear in something where he isn’t required to get his kit off?
Audiences will be more familiar by now with his armour-plated pecs, washboard stomach and seashell-shaped belly button than they are with their own bodies. In Danny Boyle’s glossy miniseries Trust, he wore ringlets, Speedo swimming trunks and precious little else to play the kidnapped heir John Paul Getty III. In Postcards from London, he disrobed as an erudite rent boy. He even went full-frontal as a closeted Coney Island teen in Beach Rats. “I was up for it, man,” he shrugs. “Female nudity has been part of cinema throughout history so I didn’t mind balancing the playing field.”
His forthcoming action romp The King’s Man – a prequel to the Kingsman series – includes a spot of shirtless combat, while Triangle of Sadness, which he is currently shooting with Ruben Östlund, the devilish director of Force Majeure and The Square, won’t buck the trend: Dickinson stars as a former model stranded on a desert island. “It’s gonna have to stop, innit?” he says with a bashful laugh. “Then again, I don’t know how much longer my body’s gonna be in decent shape, so I might as well embrace it while it lasts. The older years will have to be a bit more covered up.”
If that mention of the distant future suggests a touching faith in his own longevity, no one could claim it isn’t justified. It was Beach Rats that first showed what an alert and watchful actor he could be, capable of dominating the screen not through any Method-style huffing and puffing but with the concentrated intensity of his stillness. If you want one scene that distills his ability to convey complex emotions through imperceptible interior shifts, watch the moment when he looks on as his friends beat up a young man whom he has lured into their clutches. Pity, anger, remorse and self-loathing play on his face all at once, but he barely moves.
Despite Dickinson’s acting experience, and his sleepy-sexy East End drawl, he fitted in seamlessly on that movie with the cast of Brooklynite non-professionals. “I thought: ‘OK, I can go with this.’ It was hard because I had my training, whereas they’d turn up sometimes and say: ‘I don’t know my lines, bro.’ I’d be, like,” – he puts on a haughty RP accent – “‘OK, well I do.’”
Although there was some improvisation on Beach Rats, Joanna Hogg’s forthcoming arthouse sequel The Souvenir Part II was nothing but. “Joanna works with a structure but no script, so it was strange turning up on set and not getting your lines,” says Dickinson, one of two actors hired when Hogg reshaped the film after Robert Pattinson dropped out. “But without tooting my own horn, I’m capable. I never thought: ‘I dunno what to say.’”
His career to date has been a savvy mix of low-budget, high-calibre projects such as Hogg’s film and Xavier Dolan’s recent Matthias & Maxime, and occasional forays into the mainstream. He played a dashing Prince Charming figure opposite Angelina Jolie in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and now in The King’s Man he is the swashbuckling hero, whose father (Ralph Fiennes) inducts him into the upper-class secret service against the backdrop of the first world war.
“My character is from a more well-to-do family than me, that’s for sure,” says Dickinson, who is the son of a hairdresser and a social worker and still lives in the same unflashy corner of east London where he was raised. Previous instalments in the Kingsman series have been disagreeably laddish in nature, but Dickinson insists that the director Matthew Vaughn has brought a slightly more dramatic tone to this prequel, despite a fantastical approach to history, featuring a conglomerate of real-world super-villains that includes Rhys Ifans as Rasputin.
“Matthew wanted to approach this one with some weight, and not to make a mockery of the sacrifices that so many people went through,” he says. “There’s still a playful energy, though. No one takes themselves too seriously.”
That includes his screen father. “Ralph is incredibly disciplined but he’s also very free and funny.” He grins sheepishly. “I’m a bit of a fanboy with everyone. When I worked with Angelina Jolie, that wasn’t a small thing for me, you know? That was massive. I play it down, otherwise I get starry eyes.”
He used to watch Jolie’s dad, Jon Voight, in Midnight Cowboy, and marvel at his performance as the gormless Joe Buck. Then it dawned on him that it was actually the snivelling Ratso Rizzo, played by Dustin Hoffman, who represented the meatier acting challenge. “I’d love to play Ratso!” he says. “That’s where the grime is.”
The closest he has come himself is in the bleak new British drama County Lines, in which he is an east London drugs kingpin who grooms boys for the criminal life. “That was really exciting for me,” he says. “There was no vanity with that character. He’s just not a very nice person; he’s a predator. He thinks he’s Pablo Escobar with his little empire. I met a lot of ex-gang members who had been living that life, so I really got to understand that existence. Also, I know that sort of person much better than I know my character in The King’s Man. Those sorts of boys went to my school, you know?”
His home turf is never far from his mind. He kept busy during lockdown by mucking in at Project Parker, a disused Walthamstow dairy that was transformed into a makeshift homeless shelter. And the dreamy videos he has directed for two singles by his girlfriend Rose Gray were both shot locally. Those film-making ambitions predate his acting ones: he started out as a crew member on music videos before catching the youth theatre bug. Now, in post-production on a new short of his own, he believes directing has helped him develop a thicker skin.
“There’s a tendency as an actor to be wrapped up in your insecurities, and I don’t know if I have that any more. I’ve said to a lot of directors: ‘Please, I don’t do well with praise.’ I’d rather be told: ‘That was rubbish.’ Praise isn’t constructive; it doesn’t force you to be better. Praise is what you get at the end.” So he’s fine with a glowing review, then? “I personally find it embarrassing,” he admits. “I need to work on that.”
What scares him more than praise is the idea of being pigeonholed by his looks. “As a person, I’m not just one thing, so it would be silly to just play one type of role.” That said, there’s only so far he can get from his own physicality. “I know I’m this lanky, six-foot-two … ” He grapples for the right noun, “boy. So it’s about searching for different types of characters. In terms of moving forward, I don’t think I’d find too much pleasure doing things that are solely based around my appearance.” In other words, we’ll be seeing both more and less of him in the future.
County Lines is released on 20 November; The King’s Man is released on 26 February
