Why Harris Dickinson suspended the career as a suspended actor for directly “Urchin”

When someone has an acting career in strong ancestry, the casting directors line up to offer star roles and a newly crowned label as a Hollywood IT boy, it is unlikely to choose to take a screen break for a whole year. They would probably not be informed by their agents either.

But that’s exactly what Harris Dickinson – one of the fastest faces in industry – has done.

After the shot wrapped in “Babygirl” at the beginning of 2024, he entered the preparation of “Urchin” directly, his beginnings as a director. “I did not work as an actor for a year,” he explains to Variety. “I had no choice. There was no way that I was going to be able to shoot this and work on other things. Of course, things have appeared, but I just got involved. ”

But his commitment to “Urchin” has now brought Dickinson to the Cannes Film Festival, and only three years after having made an escape from the whole distribution of the Golden Palme d’Or of Ruben Ostlund “Triangle of Tadness”, playing half of a model couple whose luxury cruising holidays take place comicly. In competition in the UN sidebar at the UN, it is one of the group actors presenting their first features of the director’s chair, a star group which also includes Kristen Stewart and Scarlett Johansson.

“It makes sense to me that they decided to make films,” he said. “Especially when you look at the work they have accomplished – it is clear that they have a real interest in cinema.”

At just 28 years old and a newcomer relating to the industry in comparison, Dickinson may not have the same job as Stewart or Johansson. But a desire to direct was there long before his name was in the lights – and even before he started playing. In 2021, before “Triangle of Tadness” made him a star, he created his short film “2003” at the London Film Festival. Produced by Archie Pearch, which he had met several years earlier, “2003” became the first film of the images of Duo Devisio. “Urchin” – that Dickinson also started writing before “Triangle of Tadness” (and would work during production) – marks the first functionality of quotes.

With Frank Dillane, the film – which already generated buzz before Cannes – follows a disturbed young man but charming in the streets of London whose efforts to put his life in order are hampered by his own self -destructive trends. It is captivating, but unorthodox and experimental in parts – and even features Dickinson in a small role. It is also a subject which, according to Dickinson, is close to his heart.

“I have people close to me fight with a completely cyclical behavior and I was interested in the psychology of this, and that made me want to talk about a targeted character study with someone at the center that takes care of this,” he said. “I wanted to attack it in a nuanced way and bring humanity to this trip.”

To obtain this good nuance, Dickinson, he said that he had “invited the interrogation” and “meticulous exam” in the script, and from a variety of tracks, including probation services, mental health groups and addition specialists. “It is absolutely fundamental, in my eyes, to put it to the earth and to ensure as something that is a) coming from a place of truth, and b) trying to do it justice.”

It should also be noted that Dickinson has long been volunteering for causes related to homelessness, passing the first locking to help in a makeshift refuge and set up a London branch of the homeless charity under a single sky. The experiences of these – and of the “different people I met along the way” – helped to add authenticity to the history of “Urchin”.

The film “was certainly not an easy shoot,” says Pearch. “We spent the majority of it in the street, late at night – and there were the large amount of locations and the complexities of the script.” For the director of photography, they brought Josée Deshaies (“passages”, “Saint Laurent”) who, despite his work, had never set foot in London. “But it was such support for us and also provided this new London objective. We were really intrigued by the idea of ​​someone who had never shot in London or who was in London. ”

With the film now complete and undoubtedly becoming one of the greatest stages of its launch in Cannes, Dickinson then returns to the camera to continue this actor trajectory upwards that he paused a year ago.

In one of the most expected development projects, he plays John Lennon in the film Quartet of Sam Mendes on the Beatles alongside his fast comrades Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan and Joseph Quinn. There is very little that he will say about the project, except that his Liverpudlian accent “arrives”.

But he will say that, once the shooting is finished, as he did with “Babygirl”, he plans to enter the director’s chair directly for his next feature film, marking at least a year off screen. So how do his Gersch representatives feel about one of their star talents who continue to block the locations of the extended intimate?

“They knew it wanted to make films. I said that when I signed with them – that I wanted to do this before I act. They were therefore behind and supported ‘Urchin’ ‘from the start, “said Dickinson. “But maybe they would have liked the strange work for me to do it.”