The Brit Pack: Four Actors On the Rise

by Duncan Campbell

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From left: Luke Treadaway, Tom Hughes, Jeremy Irvine, and Harry Lloyd
Photographed by Mario Testino

The dashing young men featured in Emma Watson's cover shoot are not just fashionable props; they’re actually stars in their own right. All hailing from the U.K., these talented lads are on the rise with several big-profile projects in the works—including Steven Spielberg's upcoming War Horse film adaptation—and on the brink of becoming household names. Find out more about the burgeoning Brits below.
Luke Treadaway
Luke Treadaway is no stranger to playing a rock star. Following his acclaimed performance in the 2005 mockumentary Brothers of the Head alongside his real-life twin brother, Harry, as an unstoppable conjoined twin rock duo, 26-year-old Treadaway picks up his guitar again for September’s You Instead, shot in real-time over five wild days at Scotland’s T in the Park music festival. Moving at a gentler pace, he joins Felicity Jones and Elizabeth McGovern in the film Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, based on a 1930s novella by Julia Strachey. “It’s the first time I’ve done a period drama like this,” says the actor, who played Albert in the original National Theatre version of War Horse. “So clean-shaven, neat haircut, and posh voice—it’s not really me, but it’s always fun to dress up!” But watch out for Treadaway’s return to the present day in the gritty and hilarious Attack the Block, (“inner city versus outer space, La Haine meets Alien”), out July 29, as well as the human-trafficking thriller, The Whistleblower, with Rachel Weisz and Vanessa Redgrave in August.
Tom Hughes
After studying at RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) and starring in a few television shows, Tom Hughes was rather surprised when he received a call from Burberry asking him to model in one of their now iconic campaigns photographed by Mario Testino and featuring Emma Watson in the fall of 2009. “I was surprised they knew who I was,” Hughes, 26, says. “When my agent asked them, they said they weren’t at liberty to disclose their sources. It was all very MI5!” Currently filming British independent film Eight Minutes Idle (based on a book of the same name by Matt Thorne), Hughes is as happy working with micro-budgets as he is on bigger productions. “Financial restraints can make you more artistic sometimes,” he says. “You have to work harder to make things happen. I don’t see it as limiting, just more of a challenge.” Speaking of MI5, look out for Hughes in David Hare’s espionage thriller Page Eight, alongside Ralph Fiennes and Bill Nighy due out later this year on PBS.
Jeremy Irvine
Following what can only be described as a stellar rise, War Horse’s Jeremy Irvine can probably expect to hear the telephone ringing more often from now on. “I was in the chorus of the Royal Shakespeare Company doing a little play called Dunsinane at the Hampstead Theatre, in London,” Irvine remembers. “To go from no lines carrying a spear at the back, to the lead of War Horse was a bit of a leap.” After a worldwide search and more than three months of auditions, Irvine was chosen by Steven Spielberg as the lead role in his film adaptation of the West End/Broadway smash hit due out in December. Not bad for the 20-year-old who left LAMDA (The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) after a year. “I decided I had done enough of the classroom thing,” he says. “The drama school training in the U.K. is the best in the world, but there’s nothing like learning on the job.”

Harry Lloyd
Oxford-educated Harry Lloyd, 27, had never played a real person when he was cast as the young Denis Thatcher, consort to Britain’s first female prime minister, in Phyllida Lloyd’s upcoming biopic, The Iron Lady, which will be released later this year. “It was a new kind of challenge,” he says, “because you have to tie it in with the audience’s preconceptions—they already have an idea of what that person is supposed to be like.” After working with Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher and Jim Broadbent as the older version of her husband, the actor will no doubt become a household name (perhaps like his great-great-great-grandfather Charles Dickens), perhaps owing to his appearance in HBO’s epic fantasy series Game of Thrones, in which he plays exiled king Viserys Targaryen.  “He’s a frustrated and repressed little boy who takes it out on his sister,” Lloyd says. “It all gets rather complicated, but he’s trying to marry her off to someone so he can use their army. It’s about as far from Denis Thatcher as you can get!”