A Sense Of Joy

Harris Dickinson is standing on the brink. Is he a one-hit wonder or is he here to stay? Is he a Prince Philip or more of a Frankie? Could he even be, dare we predict it, the next 007?

- Josh Sims

Is it Terence Stamp?”

Harris Dickinson has interrupted himself. A random thought has barged into his conversation flow. He’s looking perplexed. “I had a weird dream last night about Terence Stamp being sick,” he says, as though the fantasy maladies of a fellow English actor might pose a problem. “Who made Eureka? Or The Witches?” he asks. “No, hang on, it’s a Passolini film— Theorem. Have you seen that? Anyway, Stamp was really prominent in my dream. I don’t often dream of actors.”

Some, it might be suggested, could well be dreaming of him, however, and given this fresh-faced actor’s roles to date, that’s no big surprise. Dickinson first made his mark in Eliza Hittman’s acclaimed 2017 independent film Beach Rats, in which he plays a kid in the New Jersey ’burbs discovering his sexuality, unsure whether he’s straight or gay, but exploring both sides. He followed that with the lead in Steve McLean’s Postcards From London, playing a gay male escort in a hyperreal version of London’s Soho district during its heady red light days.

Both roles involved baring his arse as much as his soul. Yet, more recently, he’s flipped these arty credentials on their head, playing the dudish love interest in the film adaptation of the teen sci-finovel The Darkest Minds, and the handsome prince in Disney’s Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. Think “nobility, fairness, that regal look”, he says. “Getting the part of a prince was weird for me, a boy from Walthamstow [in north-east London]. It was the kind of thing that didn’t happen, ridiculous and great at the same time.”