The Foundation

Jack O'Connell was born in Alvaston, a suburb of Derby, in 1990. He grew up in a working-class household, initially aiming for professional football as a striker before injuries ended that path. He discovered acting through compulsory drama classes at Saint Benedict Catholic School and trained at the Television Workshop in Nottingham from age 13.

His film debut came when director Shane Meadows cast him in This Is England (2006), writing the role of Pukey specifically for him. It was an auspicious entry point: a kitchen-sink film that went on to define a generation of British cinema, and O'Connell was in it at 15.

Wider recognition came through television. He played James Cook across two series of Skins (2009–2013), a role that tracked his own turbulent years with uncomfortable precision. His father died when he was 18, and the period that followed was difficult. The discipline of long-form performance offered a way through.

The Turns

The years 2013 and 2014 consolidated his reputation. He anchored the prison drama Starred Up (2013) as a volatile young offender transferred to the same facility as his estranged father, earning Best Actor at the Dublin International Film Festival. That same year he starred in the Belfast thriller ’71 as a British soldier separated from his regiment in the Falls Road.

Unbroken (2014), directed by Angelina Jolie, cast him as Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner and World War II prisoner of war. The film earned him the BAFTA Rising Star Award and the National Board of Review Breakthrough Award. O'Connell has credited Jolie with influencing his personal transformation during that period.

The decade since has been deliberately varied: Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022), Ferrari (2023) as racing driver Peter Collins, Back to Black (2024) as Blake Fielder-Civil in the Amy Winehouse biopic. Then Ryan Coogler's Sinners (2025), in which he plays Remmick, an Irish vampire in a period horror set in the American South. The ensemble received a Gotham Award.

The Lido

Ink, which opens the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on September 2, casts O'Connell as Larry Lamb. Yorkshire-born, abrasive, and gifted, Lamb was the editor who built The Sun into Britain's best-selling tabloid after Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce) acquired the paper in 1969. Claire Foy plays Jules Davies, a fictional composite of the women who worked Fleet Street in that era. The screenplay is James Graham's, adapted from his 2017 stage play.

Danny Boyle directs. It is the first of his films to screen at Venice, and it competes for the Golden Lion. Netflix acquired US and Latin American distribution rights in July 2026. A limited US theatrical run begins December 11, 2026.

The role requires O'Connell to hold authority over a room. He is 35. At this point in his career, that is not the hard part.