Words: Chris Cotonou
Photography: Pip Bourdillon
Stylist: Molly McNaughton
After working almost non-stop for the past few years, Ben Radcliffe finally has a moment to reflect on what comes next. “In the past, it was just exciting to be offered a job,” the 24-year-old Leeds-born actor tells me. “But it feels like I’m transitioning into another part of my career where I can consider what projects I really want to take on.”
For Radcliffe, who plays young pilot Freddie Hooke in Disney’s upcoming drama The Shepherd, the sky’s the limit (he’s on a litany of one-to- watch lists, for good reason): starring alongside John Travolta as a Royal Air Force officer. It also — coincidentally, he insists — happens to be the first of two back-to-back projects where he has taken on the role of a pilot, the next being the upcoming series Masters of the Air for Apple TV. Radcliffe recounts how Travolta would regale him with flying stories, and how the veteran’s experiences helped him relate to the story. “Spending time with other actors is where I learn the most,” he says. “On Masters, I’m around Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Barry Keoghan, and you’re constantly watching these guys and trying to read their habits and techniques. Acting, to me, is basically a form of confidence, and after nine months on the set with them, that was the best I’d felt about my acting.”
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Just by looking at Radcliffe (who is an alumnus of the famous Sylvia Young Theatre School) it’s unsurprising he would be called to act beside other such handsome actors. He has classically romantic English Brideshead features, as though he would fit in perfectly at a Surrey country manor home. But Radcliffe, who retains a faint northern accent, has more humble origins: his father used to sell fruit machines in Leeds and his mother is a dancer who encouraged both him and his sister to perform and act on the weekends after school. Make no mistake, he’s where he is today because of a lot of hard work and persistence.
“I was seriously young when I started,” he notes. “My first proper job was when I was seven years old. After I performed in Oliver in London, I remember this happy feeling, and I realised I wanted to continue acting, and have done ever since.” But although it is his first love, acting has never been Radcliffe’s sole ambition. “Later on, I decided what I really wanted to do was cinematography instead,” he admits. “That was my main focus. But I would still do plays here and there.
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And after a production of Grease at my school, an agent went to watch me and sign me, and that put the belief back in me that I could become an actor. I looked to the back of the camera because I probably didn’t have the confidence to think I could achieve being in front of it.” While the acting has taken off (literally and figuratively), Radcliffe still has an eye on filmmaking in the future. It isn’t only the actors he’s observing on set, but the cinematographers and directors, too— understanding the mise-en-scene — and the goal is “to make films with my friends.”
Between big-budget Disney and Apple TV projects, Radcliffe is quietly making a series of DIY independent short films with his friends, which started when a choreographer pal approached him to do a dance concept video. It was meant to be a one-off, but Radcliffe has done seven already. “The last one we did, we flew 15 dancers out to where I was working in Bulgaria at the time. I thought, ‘we need a street’ and there’s a massive New York-style street in the backlot of the studio I was at.” The studio boss agreed, and out of nowhere Radcliffe also had a Steadicam operator, a director of photography, and a props department. “It was the best feeling directing that all day,” he says, with a large smile. “I was so focused and excited about everything, it filled me with so much joy. As an actor, you spend 12 hours on set, and probably only work for four of those hours. Whereas with directing, I didn’t even get time for lunch. It was great!”
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It is little surprise that someone as persistent and hardworking as Ben Radcliffe would find true joy by staying busy. He’s hardly stopped working since he was a child; and as more projects come his way, he seems increasingly excited about what arrives next — whether that’s as an actor or as a budding Scorsese behind the camera. Either way, though, that’s far from the main point. “You know what?” he says, as we wrap up our conversation. “I’m really just trying to have fun.”
This feature was taken from Gentleman’s Journal’s Winter 2023 issue. Read more about it here.
Want to read similar? Here's an interview with actor Jonah Hauer-King
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