In a canal-side apartment in Camden, Rafferty Law — the 23-year-old model, actor, musician and eldest son of actors Jude Law and Sadie Frost — is talking me through his tattoos. “Some of them don’t really mean anything,” he says, pointing to the sketches and symbols dotted over his hands and forearms: a lightning bolt, a percentage sign, a bird of prey across his left hand.
Others tell stories: nine, inked on in Roman numerals, is his lucky number; the initials SHO, crossed-through in red, stand for Something to Hate On, a creative platform he founded with friends but left last year. Law pauses when he gets to some loosely sketched figurines. “These are some Salvador Dali men ... I always wanted to be good at art but I just couldn’t do it.”
Which is ironic, given his latest gig: Law is in the midst of filming his big-screen debut as a penniless artist and street painter — the lead role in Sky’s upcoming remake of Oliver Twist. The film, simply titled Twist, comes out next year and is a (very) modern take on the Dickens classic: scenes are filmed on rooftops in Shoreditch and Rita Ora plays the Artful Dodger, coaxing Oliver into Fagin (Michael Caine) and Sikes’s (Lena Headey) gang as part of a high-stakes art heist.
Law admits he was keen to impress given the “experienced” cast, and “disappeared” for two months in the run-up to work on his sketching, fitness and script-work. Happily, he and Ora clicked “straight away”: paparazzi shots over recent weeks show them chasing each other down the street, hopping over concrete walls and laughing as Law films a scene in his underwear.
The role is Law’s biggest acting job to date after a series of short films and it’s clear he’s inherited his parents’ coolness in front of a camera, falling into an effortless pout the moment our photographer raises his lens — a pose he clearly learned from modelling for Dolce & Gabbana, Timberland and Dior (his sister Iris, 19, is also a model).
“I feel comfortable performing — it feels very natural,” Law continues, introducing himself as Raff when we meet at STAY apartments in Camden and fondly recalling his schooldays “playing guitars in our dormitories” at arty Hampshire boarding school Bedales (other alumni include Cara Delevingne and Lily Allen). He might have had a head-start in the acting game — growing up with Frost at the epicentre of the Primrose Hill party set and counting Kate Moss and Nick Grimshaw among family friends — but it’s clear he’s not taking his big break for granted, and getting into character has taken commitment.
“Twist is a climber, so I had two months to get in shape,” he tells me, full of energy and straight from the gym at White City House where he’s been working out with a personal trainer. Compare today’s chiselled look with photos taken a year ago and it’s clear he’s been working hard: baby face and peroxide teen hair gone, Law is the spitting image of his father, aside from the more feline features he’s clearly inherited from Frost. He tells me he’s taken up boxing and parkour to prepare for the climbing and rooftop scenes. He started at a gym then took it onto the streets — which hurt, “a lot ... If you knock your shins on the mats in a gym it doesn’t hurt,” he laughs. “Outside, it kills.”
Filming started a month ago and Law runs four miles every morning before arriving on set, around Clapham Common or Battersea Park. He’s a south London boy now, he insists: he moved out of his mother’s house in Primrose Hill two years ago and lives in south London with a friend. They don’t have much time to hang out thanks to filming but, happily, Law has persuaded four or five south London pals to start a running club. They plan to run a half marathon next year to raise money for mental health. “I’ve got friends with their own problems so it’s something I’m very aware of,” he says.
Law is single after splitting with long-term girlfriend, French model Clementine Linieres, in June. “I’m very open about how I feel and I think it’s something that we as a friendship group have really benefited from in the last year. We all went through some hard times together and coming out of that has given us the opportunity to realise that it’s important [to talk], even just to send a text. Just check up on people and let them know that you’re there.”
It’s a message he’s keen to drive further, whether it’s through poetry (“a way I like to express myself”) or his band Outer Stella Overdrive, which counts Blur singer Damon Albarn’s son Rudy as its drummer (Law is lead singer).
Their new single, I Say, is out next week and is all about speaking out. “It’s very easy to have negative thoughts about yourself, especially if you’re doing music or acting or modelling, and at the end of the day, if you speak to someone about it — a mate or a family member, someone you trust — you automatically feel like a weight’s been taken off your shoulder. The song is literally all about that.”
Did he struggle growing up in the spotlight, given his parents’ high-profile divorce in 2003 and constant press attention (his father had to testify in a phone-hacking trial against the News of the World in 2014)? Law pauses. “I don’t think I’ve ever even considered it because for me, my mum and dad are my mum and dad — they’ve always just been my parents. I’ve always just wanted to focus on me as an individual and work to my own strengths.”
Frost visited him on the Twist set last week but generally Law likes the fact that his parents “let me sit back and find my own path … without also making me feel like they’re not there,” he adds, hastily. Living away from the carousel of visitors at his mother’s house in Primrose Hill is “nice, because now I can ring her up and be like, ‘I miss you, let’s go for lunch,’ rather than waking up on top of each other every day.”
The pair practise yoga together every Tuesday (“I take back everything I said — yoga is really intense”) and Law appears to have inherited his mother’s zen: he’s a staunch animal-lover, proud vegetarian and jokes that he’s not following Tottenham in the football at the moment because “I’m trying to stay away from all bad energy”. Unlike his parents, Law has grown up in the social media generation and he admits it’s taken a few years to find a balance. “There was a time when I didn’t have a phone for a year,” he laughs, shooting his manager a guilty look — “she knows about that”. “When you’re a bit younger you’re constantly scrolling for no reason on your phone, and when you’re writing music that’s such a distraction,” so when his phone broke three years ago, he didn’t replace it. “I’d just check emails every day and it was amazing, but I think it was frustrating for other people.”
These days, he has a private Instagram for close friends and sees his public account as a good opportunity for promoting the band and staying in touch with friends in LA and New York, but he’s learned to leave his phone in his trailer on set. The only exception is when he needs music for an emotional trigger: Rage Against The Machine for high-speed chases; classical music for the scenes about losing his mother.
How does Law’s mother feel about his tattoos? “She wasn’t actually too cross the first time, but I think it’s when you start getting quite a few, she’s like, ‘Urgh, not again,’” he laughs. His brother Finlay Munro Kemp, from Frost’s first marriage to Spandau Ballet guitarist Gary Kemp, is engaged to a tattoo artist, Charlotte Mallory, so there’s plenty of temptation. “It’s it’s hard because she’s so good,” says Law with a guilty grin. “But I’m trying to take a break [from tattoos] for now. I don’t want to make my mum hate me too much.”
