Because the credit of Sam Mendes’s love letter to cinema Empire of Mild rolled on the Telluride Movie Pageant, the viewers left the theater asking one another the identical query: “Who was that?” Starring reverse Olivia Colman as her character’s unlikely love curiosity Stephen, an aspiring architect, the 25-year-old Jamaica-born, East London–raised Micheal Ward is already a BAFTA winner and It boy throughout the pond (and acquired one other BAFTA nod for this position). However with Bond rumors swirling and Brad Pitt leaving phrase for the forthcoming Ferrari flick, it appears Ward’s megawattage has unfold from the Rockies to Hollywood very quickly.
LIKE MANY BRITS, an early brush with Shakespeare kicked off his performing ambitions, aided by an encouraging drama trainer—in a made-for-Hollywood twist, she grew to become an agent, and ended up signing Ward. “With out her, this won’t have occurred.”
AS THE FIRST ARTIST in his household, he displays, “My mother’s mainly an unpaid actor. We’ve been via rather a lot and he or she needed to placed on a entrance for us to really feel like we had been okay, even when she wasn’t.” The household caught a screening in London. “Apparently Mother simply began crying, seeing her son’s identify come up as one of many first credit.”
Clothes by Louis Vuitton Males’s; necklace by David Yurman.{Photograph} by Nick Riley Bentham. Styled by Sean Knight.
AND YET… “She walked out on the scenes the place I had intercourse with Olivia. I heard after the very first kiss, she was like, ‘No!’ and obtained up.”
AS FOR COLMAN? “She’s precisely who you see on TV in interviews. She’s so open, so humorous. She’d love to simply go for a drink and nobody would hassle her.”
High by Prada; watch by Rolex. All through: hair merchandise by Oribe; grooming merchandise by Laura Mercier.{Photograph} by Nick Riley Bentham. Styled by Sean Knight.
HIS BIGGEST CHALLENGE, he says, is that “I’m afraid of animals”; it took months to get used to the thought of doing a single scene involving a pigeon.
WHILE ATTENDING his first Hollywood gala, Irish actor Kerry Condon, who discovered herself surrounded by supermodels, joked that Ward would possibly need to swap seats along with her. It wasn’t that he needed to sit down subsequent to Hailey Bieber, he laughs, “I simply needed to be amongst the younger ones, to know how they’re dwelling in LA and stuff like that.” Ward was seated with just a few community executives. “To know that these individuals even know who I’m, not to mention love my work in a movie that they love, is insane.”
GROOMING, MIRNA JOSE; TAILOR, HASMIK KOURINIAN. PRODUCED ON LOCATION BY PREISS CREATIVE. FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS.
