His latest show has managed to set viewing records in the UK, caught the attention of the prime minister, and been the catalyst for a difficult conversation about modern masculinity – all in the space of a couple of weeks.
But Stephen Graham isn’t an overnight success story.
The blanket coverage being bestowed upon Adolescence, Netflix’s four-part drama series about a young boy who murders a female classmate, is the culmination of more than two decades of work for the Liverpudlian actor who despite forging a Hollywood career has always come back to working-class British stories.
Graham’s acting career started in his parents’ front room in Kirkby, on the outskirts of Liverpool, where he did impressions of Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda, and Margaret Thatcher. He was spotted by a local actor, Andrew Schofield – who was Johnny Rotten in Alex Cox’s 1986 film Sid and Nancy – while playing Jim Hawkins in a school production of Treasure Island.
Graham joined Liverpool’s Everyman youth theatre, an institution that has helped develop the acting chops of everyone from Pete Postlethwaite and Julie Walters to Jonathan Pryce and Bill Nighy, then moved to London.
Graham got a fortuitous bit part in the Guy Ritchie short The Hard Case: he went along to support a friend and was asked to audition. He wasn’t cast in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but that small role planted the seed for his breakthrough as Tommy, the cockney dog enthusiast in Ritchie’s Snatch, starring Brad Pitt and Benicio del Toro.
Martin Scorsese was impressed and cast Graham in Gangs of New York, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, which led to him playing two real-life gangsters: Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire and Baby Face Nelson in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies. He worked with Scorsese again on The Irishman, but for Graham – who lives in the sleepy Leicestershire village of Ibstock with his wife and co-producer, Hannah Walters, and two children – it is British drama that interests him the most.
“Is it a conscious decision that I do these, what shall we call them, working-class projects?” Graham told the Guardian in 2019 when he was promoting Line of Duty and Shane Meadows’ The Virtues. “No. But the writing resonates with me. They’re the sort of stories I saw as a kid. I saw Boys from the Blackstuff, I saw Play for Today, I saw Made in Britain.” He is drawn to “real stories about real people”, who are often living on the edges of society: marginalised, rejected and frequently very, very angry.
Adolescence is slightly different. Graham isn’t just one of the leads, he’s the writer, along with Jack Thorne, and producer. The show’s director, Philip Barantini, first met Graham on the set of Band of Brothers and the pair of scouse actors forged a close relationship that remained as he evolved into a mould-breaking director. His “one shot” technique, which he used with Graham on the kitchen drama Boiling Point, has helped create one of the most talked about British TV shows of the 21st century.
“He cares about the work,” says Barantini. “He’s not just coming in and saying: ‘Where do you want me?’ When he steps on set you’ve got to be on top of your game because he’s giving you everything. He thrives on being real and being in the moment. Some actors come in and they pre-plan everything: every tear, every movement. He really soaks in the environment and the room, he works off energy.”
Other friends and colleagues speak about a “courteous” actor who is generous on set to cast and crew. But also someone who demands high standards, not by shouting or intimidation but by leading by example and coaching less experienced actors.
Michael Socha, the Derby-based actor who starred alongside Graham in This Is England, says it’s his dedication to his work that makes his performances special. Graham brought Socha in to work with him on the BBC prison drama Time. Before he got on set, Graham was already discussing his character’s backstory – putting flesh on the bones so the performance was stronger or – a word Graham favours – real.
“It’s difficult watching my friends act,” says Socha. “But Stephen has that quality – an ‘it’ factor. He’s got a brilliant natural performance. It’s ultra real, believable and invested acting. You’re seeing an actor really feel the emotions of the character and he does that every time. I’ve never seen him do something bad … and he’s done a lot.”
Occasionally his commitment to a character has taken him to dark places. When filming This Is England, Graham embodied the character of Combo so strongly that he started to lose sight of where he began and the skinhead ended. “It was life-changing. I lost myself quite a bit within that character,” he once said. There have been other difficult times. On Desert Island Discs in 2019, Graham told Lauren Laverne about his battles with depression and a suicide attempt shortly after he moved to London for drama school.
Graham grew up as a mixed-race child in Liverpool, a city with the oldest established black population in the UK but also one with a bad reputation for racism. Playing a fascist – one who was confused about his own racial identity and who beats another black character half to death – dredged up painful memories. “I had moments of getting back to my apartment and phoning Hannah and crying my eyes out, and I drank. For me that was where I really learned to dive into a character,” he added.
Graham’s origins are central to the way he picks projects. He regularly asks if his characters can have scouse accents in an attempt to broaden the type of characters actors from Liverpool can play and to undermine certain negative stereotypes. “He’s paved the way for other scouse actors,” said Barantini. (Graham encouraged his scouse co-star in A Thousand Blows, James Nelson-Joyce, after the young actor approached him and his wife in a Liverpool Nando’s.)
He has also been a vocal advocate for better stories about working-class communities, ones that reflect complexity and warmth rather than rely on well-worn tropes. “Things can be hard but there’s also a lot of laughter,” he told the Sunday Times.
“My childhood was full of it and being able to represent where I’m from is integral to me. Too often I’ll watch stuff and think they’re treating the working class like an art project. It’s very condescending. ‘Ooh, look at the poor!’ But I’m proud to be this mixed-race working-class kid from a block of flats.”
He likes village life: he helps run his son’s football team and is a regular face in the Co-op. “I don’t want to be sitting on Palm Beach or driving down thingy boulevard,” he once said. “It’s not for me.”
When asked if he really wouldn’t rather be in LA rather than a Leicestershire village, he replied. “No, not really. But that’s just me. I love England. It’s going to the shit a bit, but I love the people in this country.”
With the success of Adolescence, the British stories he’s invested in are clearly paying off.
