Owen Cooper's Staggering Performance in Adolescence: A Look at His Breakthrough Role and Future in Hollywood

On June 5, the IndieWire Honors Spring 2025 ceremony will celebrate the people behind some of the best TV work this season. When I hopped on Zoom to talk to Owen Cooper, the young star of the Netflix show Adolescence, I was ready for a good chat. Cooper is getting an IndieWire Honor for Breakthrough Performance for his amazing work on the hit series. What surprised me, but in a good way, was seeing his dad sitting right next to him. This family, I thought, really understands things.

If you have seen Adolescence, you probably get what I mean. This four-episode crime drama came out on Netflix in March. It shows the unsettling and deeply gripping aftermath of a crime that seems impossible. Cooper, in his very first acting role on screen, plays 13-year-old Jamie Miller. Jamie has just been arrested for murder, yes murder, when the series begins. Stephen Graham, who also plays Jamie’s shocked dad, co-created and co-wrote the show with Jack Thorne. It is a tough but important watch.

As the series continues, it is not just Jamie’s crime that is looked at. The show also asks how and why he, and really, how we all, got to this point. Ben Travers from IndieWire wrote earlier this year that the series "is a smart twist on TV's usual crime dramas. Instead of asking who among us could do such violence, the series looks at why so many boys are growing up to be angry, woman-hating men." At the center of all this is Cooper’s truly impressive acting. It is maddening, full of emotion, horrifying, and heartbreaking all at once. We learn about Jamie and the world that shaped him, including his own family. So yes, I was very happy to see his smiling father sitting by him as we talked about his work and what is next for him.

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When Cooper and his dad, who works in IT, joined the Zoom call, it was early evening in the UK, just before dinner. I wondered what the 15-year-old actor would be doing if he wasn't chatting with me. "I’d probably just be on the Xbox," Cooper said with a smile. At that exact moment, his father said, "Doing homework." That was perfect. It gave me a real feel for their family life.

The Cooper men agree more when it comes to what they watch for fun. When I asked what movies he watched growing up, the young actor beamed. "I just watched whatever my dad had on, so ‘Terminator’ and big action films and stuff like that," Cooper said. "But the films I like now? I just love everything. Robert De Niro in gangster movies, I love. And my dad’s the exact same. My dad let me watch whatever I want." His dad then quickly jumped in with "to a limit," and Cooper smiled, adding, "But, yeah, if I was watching it with him."

My apologies to Robert De Niro, but Cooper’s first real acting obsession was with Tom Holland. When I asked him when he first realized an actor was truly putting on a performance, something he might want to do himself, Cooper immediately pointed to his fellow Brit. "I think it was Tom Holland in ‘The Impossible,’ that I thought that he was really good and that I wanted to be like him and I wanted to be doing what he’s doing," he said. "Tom Holland was the first actor I saw and was like, ‘Oh, he’s really good.’ When I was a kid, I watched actors as characters, I didn’t watch them as people."

Just to make it clear, when he said "was a kid," he meant when he was about six or eight years old. Since then, he added, he has watched "The Impossible" about 30 times. Even before he was a student, it seems Cooper was studying his craft. As his interest in acting grew Cooper started going to weekly classes with The Drama MOB. This Manchester drama school was co-created by Tina O’Brien from Coronation Street and Esther Morgan. This groundwork seems to have really paid off for him.

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When The Drama MOB received a request for self-tapes for the role of Jamie, Cooper eagerly took the chance. "I had a lot of self-tape requests before, but ‘Adolescence’ came round, I had no idea who anyone was, because I only got told the director was," Cooper said. The young actor taped his part, felt good about it, and sent it in. About a month later, he got a callback for an in-person audition. Now that was truly scary for him.

"I was so, so nervous for that. I’ve never done an in-person audition before," he said. That first one, ever the cool kid, Cooper said it "wasn’t too bad." Next came another in-person audition near Leeds, where the show was planned to shoot. Cooper met with Jack Thorne and producer Jo Johnson. He kept going through more meetings, "three or four more, because it was taking so long to get the part, because so many other good actors were auditioning in it." This shows how much competition there was for the role.

Then Cooper met Stephen Graham. "I did a chemistry session with Stephen, which I think was my favorite one, because I think I did quite well in it," he said. "I don’t know, me and Stephen just clicked, instantly just clicked. It was like an improv-y workshop. As soon as I met him, he looked at me in the eyes and said, ‘From now on, you’re my son, and I’m your dad.’ I just can’t imagine that I’m in that situation, because I’ve never even been in a police station before. So it was quite difficult, but it just came to me." This connection with Graham clearly helped him step into a very challenging role.

Two more weeks passed as the production decided between Cooper and another young actor. One day after school, his mom had some news: He got the part. He smiled remembering it. "I was so happy," he said. "I didn’t really care about the intensity and the darkness of all it. I just wanted to prove myself, that I was the perfect role for the part. No one’s seen me on TV before, so it was my chance to just grab it with both hands." His biggest worry? "Learning the lines, because I got told just before I got the part that it was going to be shot in four long takes," he said. "So when I got told that, I thought it was impossible, I thought I was never going to be able to do it. It’s just like theater; you can’t really stop in the middle."

Each episode of the series is made to look and feel like one continuous, hour-long scene. Cooper is the main focus of two of these episodes, including the shocking third episode. In this episode, Jamie, now held in a youth detention center, sits down with forensic psychologist Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty) for a disturbing interview. This was Cooper’s first time acting on screen. "Episode 3, we did first, so I had two weeks to prepare the lines for that one," he said. "I was nervous and I think I overdid the script. I think I did about four hours a day on the script. I was so nervous to forget it and be the one that was going to make it restart. I didn’t want to be that person."

Rehearsals were a big help. They had one week just with the actors, then another week with cameras in place. "The two weeks of rehearsal was the difficult part, I’m not going to lie, because it was so out of the comfort zone, the bits where I have to get in close to Erin and have to get up close and scare her and stuff, I just couldn’t do it," he said. "It took me quite a while to do, and so I just did it." On the first day of shooting Episode 3, Cooper already had every line memorized. "There were bits where I forgot the line, but I just made stuff up, and then we just kept on going," he said. "Phil Barantini, the director, said, if you get it wrong, just keep on going, because it’s natural, and it’s what a 13-year-old boy in that place with a psychologist, that’s what he’s going to do. He’s going to mess up, he’s going to stutter."

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They filmed two takes a day, for five days straight. By the end, Cooper said he was tired. Then, something a little magical happened. "With the last take, where I yawned, then Erin asked, ‘Am I boring you?,’ which is brilliant," he remembered. "That was on the very last take! I think the crew, me, everyone was a bit tired and I lost my voice, but it didn’t really sound like I lost my voice on camera." The result is one of the most striking moments of the series. It shows Cooper’s impressive talent. He used a real moment to add more power to his performance as Jamie. This scene truly stands out.

Owen Cooper hasn't watched the finished show, though he did see some early versions. The young actor already knows he does not like watching himself on camera. "I really don’t like it. I can’t stand it," he said. "Every project I’m in from now on, I’ll probably watch it once, maybe half of it, because I don’t know, I just find it cringey. I wouldn’t mind watching Adolescence on my own, but it’s with my family and, especially in Episode 3 when I’m talking such dark stuff, it’s quite hard." He added with a smile, "But, yeah, I don’t know, I’ve got a lot of films to watch, Stephen says!"

Adolescence has been a massive hit. It quickly became Netflix's number two original English-language show of all time, right behind Wednesday. It has a perfect 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 90 score on Metacritic. The show gained 24.3 million views in its first four days and even reached the top spot in 71 countries. Owen Cooper himself won Best Supporting Performance at the Gotham TV Awards. The show's success is so big that UK schools will start screening it for students. Cooper thinks this is special because it is "saving lives." He believes it is teaching kids not to engage in toxic social media behaviors.

Cooper has also been busy making more movies. He recently finished shooting Emerald Fennell’s much-anticipated Wuthering Heights adaptation. In it, he plays young Heathcliff, with Jacob Elordi playing the older version. Cooper said the experience was "a lot different, a lot different to Adolescence, but it was amazing though. The crew, the cast, everyone was amazing. And filming is obviously a lot different, I just don’t like repeating scenes. It’s just like a pet peeve of mine. I loved it and it was good."

So, what is next for this rising star? Mostly, Cooper wants to keep learning and growing. He already has a strong idea of who could best help him do that. "I don’t know if I have a certain role in mind, but I would love to work with certain people, like David Fincher, Christopher Nolan — which is a big shout-out — Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino," he said. "All of those directors, I would love to work with, and the big actors I want to work with too, because I can learn from them. I don’t want to work with them because they’re massive and famous, I want to learn off of them and work with them." It seems Owen Cooper is not just a gifted actor but also a very thoughtful one. I look forward to seeing what he does next.