Archive for the ‘Photoshoots’ Category
emily   –   May 13, 2016

I have added additional HQ portraits Jack for the Los Angeles Times last month to the gallery! Please credit back the site when re-posting photos, thanks! <3

Photoshoots & Portraits > 2016 > Los Angeles Times
emily   –   May 13, 2016

I’ve added a new portrait Jack took for Vanity Fair at the Cannes Film Festival to the gallery!

Photoshoots & Portraits > 2016 > Vanity Fair – Cannes
emily   –   May 12, 2016

Photoshoots & Portraits > 2016 > Evening Standard

EVENING STANDARD – A bright, crisp, spring afternoon in Mayfair and Jack O’Connell — dressed almost entirely in Dior, his scuffed blue suede Adidas the only nod to his pre-fame life — is sitting on a velvet sofa in one of the best suites at the Dorchester, reflecting on the downsides of stardom.

My whole life’s different,’ he says in his thick Derby accent. ‘I can’t live the life I grew up living. I used to enjoy going to the football, being around ordinary folk, or so-called ordinary folk, and family get-togethers. Now even they’re difficult. If I go to certain dos every f***er in there’s gonna want a photo.’ Then there’s the small matter of his (perfectly passable) ‘English’ teeth: ‘Whenever I go to LA, people tell me I should get my teeth done. Unless they want theirs f***ing rearranging as well I suggest they keep their mouth shut. My teeth are my teeth and I’ll be f***ed if I’m ever going to do a job on them just to serve their purposes. Well f*** ’em anyway.’ He gives a blast of infectious laughter. ‘I’m not Hollywood. There’s not a bit of me that ever wants to consider myself “Hollywood”.’

It’s hard not to think he may have to acclimatise. Just 25, O’Connell has stacked up an impressive collection of roles, including outstanding performances in Starred Up as a violent prisoner, and a turn as a British soldier lost in a riot in Belfast in ’71. This summer he’s set to go stratospheric: in July he stars alongside rumoured ex- girlfriend Cara Delevingne (more of whom later) in Tulip Fever and plays a Czech soldier in HHhH with Rosamund Pike and Mia Wasikowska. Before that, you can catch him in the Jodie Foster-directed thriller Money Monster, out today, in which he stars alongside bona fide Hollywood royalty Julia Roberts (‘a dream to work with’) and George Clooney (‘piss funny’).

Not to mention his relationship with Angelina Jolie, who cast him as the lead in her 2014 Second World War biopic Unbroken and has become a kind of mentor. Days before we met she flew to Sheffield by helicopter to see O’Connell in The Nap, the play he was starring in at the Crucible Theatre. ‘She just came up with a friend. Proper.’ She’s even met his family — after casting him in Unbroken, she took ten of his closest friends and family members out for a pub supper, which must have been a little surreal. ‘She wanted to meet my people,’ says O’Connell. ‘We all went to this place out of the way in Derbyshire, a pub where you can eat nice food. She came up on her own, man. She had some security people but they weren’t really involved and, yeah, we were all just sat around.’ Jolie, meanwhile, has said she’s ‘in awe’ of him and hailed his talent as ‘a gift’.
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emily   –   May 11, 2016

Photoshoots & Portraits > 2016 > Evening Standard

STANDARD.CO.UK – Jack O’Connell has gone from Skins to co-starring with heavyweights Julia Roberts and George Clooney in a dizzying rise to fame but the actor has vowed never to go “Hollywood”.

The 25-year-old says his former “ordinary” life is at complete odds with being recognised everywhere since landing lead roles in ’71 and Unbroken — when he gained a mentor in Angelina Jolie.

But despite his A-list status — set to be cemented with the release of his latest movie Money Monster on Friday — O’Connell says he refuses to succumb to pressure to “fix” his “English teeth” or strive for Hollywood perfection.

He told ES magazine: “Whenever I go to LA, people tell me I should get my teeth done. Unless they want theirs f****** rearranging as well I suggest they keep their mouth shut.

My teeth are my teeth and I’ll be f***** if I’m ever going to do a job on them just to serve their purposes. I’m not Hollywood. There’s not a bit of me that ever wants to consider myself ‘Hollywood’.”

In Money Monster, O’Connell is a disgruntled investor who takes a financial adviser, played by Clooney, hostage. He will also be seen in historical drama Tulip Fever with Cara Delevingne and Alicia Vikander and as a Czech soldier in HHhH with Rosamund Pike and Mia Wasikowska. The Derby-born actor, who counts Jolie and Brad Pitt as friends, said: “I can’t live the life I grew up living.

I used to enjoy going to the football, being around ordinary folk, or so-called ordinary folk, family get-togethers. Now even they’re difficult. If I go to certain dos every f***** in there’s gonna want a photo.”

He has been threatened by jealous relatives: “People assume I’m wealthy beyond belief. I ain’t. I need to work for a living. I have family members come out with claims, trying to threaten they’re going to the newspapers about me.”

He has been romantically linked to former Skins co-star Kaya Scodelario, Tulisa Contostavlos and Delevingne — who posted an Instagram picture of his neck covered in love bites with the comment #fittybum — but is currently single.

He said his fame usually helps with women, but added: “It depends on what I’m after. If it’s a bit more lingering than one night, then maybe not.”

emily   –   April 29, 2016

Photoshoots & Portraits > 2016 > Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES TIMES – There aren’t many young actors who wouldn’t be intimidated by costarring in a film with George Clooney and Julia Roberts and directed by Jodie Foster.

Except maybe for one who’s just finished working with Angelina Jolie.

When Jack O’Connell put himself on tape for Foster’s financial thriller “Money Monster,” he’d recently completed filming Jolie’s WWII movie “Unbroken.” The British actor was the lead in the 2014 film about Louis Zamperini, an Olympian who was captured as a prisoner of war. And after the movie came out, O’Connell found himself bombarded by questions about Jolie.

“The one I can’t really hack is, ‘What’s it like to be with said famous person?’ because I’m not sure what that is as a question. It’s not very specific,” the actor recalled by phone from London. “But that movie did help me promote myself in the States with work that I’m genuinely proud of.”

His pedigree impressed Foster, who said she auditioned hundreds of twentysomethings to act alongside Clooney and Roberts. She was looking to fill the part of Kyle Budwell, a blue-collar worker who takes financial advice from a popular television personality named Lee Gates (Clooney). When one of the TV host’s stock picks turns out to be a bust, Kyle loses $60,000 and, in a rage, he turns up on Gates’ set with a gun to take the production hostage.

“At first, I was concerned Jack might be too young,” Foster said of the actor, now 25. “But he has a face that’s lived and this amazing combination of someone who can be threatening and primitive but is also really lovable.”

“Money Monster” — which will debut at the Cannes Film Festival next month before it hits theaters on May 13 — marks the first film O’Connell has made in the United States. To prepare himself for the role, he spent time in Brooklyn, hanging out with firemen, riding on their truck and listening to their strong accents. He spent less time researching the stock market, which he said he has never dabbled in on his personal time.

“This was a guy who was promised some version of an American dream and the pot of gold, and he doesn’t get that,” said O’Connell. “There were certain crew members, including Jodie, who were rooting for Kyle and believed in his situation. That helped me to understand his reasoning.”

On set, Foster said, Clooney took O’Connell “under his wing.” “I don’t think Jack is impressed particularly by movie stars,” the filmmaker noted. “But George has a lot to impart to somebody like him, and Jack was open to listening.”

So what advice did Clooney offer to his young costar? O’Connell wouldn’t reveal any secret nuggets of wisdom but said he took the most away from learning that the 54-year-old still wrestles with insecurities at work.

“When you see an actor like George Clooney making the same mistakes that you do and asking the same questions you might ask,” said O’Connell, “it’s very reassuring to know that you don’t stand out as being difficult.”

emily   –   March 29, 2016

Jack is featured in Issue 10 of Hunger Magazine. You can check out the cover of the issue and a few outtakes from the shoot in our gallery. I ordered the magazine around a week ago, so hopefully I’ll get it soon and add scans!

Magazine Scans > 2016 > Hunger Magazine – Issue 10
Photoshoots & Portraits > 2016 > Hunger Magazine
emily   –   March 13, 2016

Jack has recently done a photoshoot for Mr Porter. Check out the outtakes in our gallery!

Photoshoots & Portraits > 2016 > Mr Porter

MR PORTERMr Jack O’Connell can’t stop rubbing his head. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ve just had me hair cut. It’s a bit addictive.” A high-and-tight – very high, very tight – he refers to it as his “publicity tour cut”. The on-set hairdresser demurred at first, telling him that he couldn’t cut it any shorter without getting the clippers out. Mr O’Connell’s response? “Best get the clippers out, then.”

He’s no stranger to the shaven-headed look. For his first major role, in Mr Shane Meadows’ This Is England, Mr O’Connell donned bovver boots, acid-washed denim and a Harrington jacket to play teenage skinhead “Pukey” Nicholls. This time around, though, he’s not out to make a fashion statement. “It’s just more practical, innit?” he says, running a hand back and forth across his head. “You don’t have to worry about it. With so many cameras around, you can’t help but become a little self-conscious.” Such is life for one of this generation’s most promising young actors.

In the 10 years since This Is England, the noise surrounding Mr O’Connell has been building steadily. First, he landed a plum role in cult teen TV drama Skins, as the charismatic lager lout James Cook – which he jokingly describes as “not much of a stretch at the time”. He followed this with a series of critically acclaimed movie appearances in films such as Harry Brown, ’71 and Starred Up. It wasn’t until 2014, though, when he was hand-picked by Ms Angelina Jolie to star in her second directorial project, Unbroken, that the noise became deafening.

And you get the feeling that this could just be the start: things are likely to shift up another gear in May when he takes the new ’do on tour to promote his next project, Money Monster. The movie tells the story of Lee Gates, the brash host of a business TV show and supposed guru on all things Wall Street, who is taken hostage live on air by an angry investor, played by Mr O’Connell, who has just lost his life savings on a bad tip. The cast and crew give a fairly accurate representation of the kind of company that Mr O’Connell now keeps: the movie’s director, Ms Jodie Foster, and his two co-stars, Mr George Clooney and Ms Julia Roberts, have five Oscars between them.
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emily   –   March 13, 2016

Jack did an interview for ShortList last month. You can check out the cover and some great outtakes in our gallery! You can also read the interview below.

Magazine Scans > 2016 > ShortLIst (February 18)
Photoshoots & Portraits > 2016 > ShortList

SHORTLIST – Jack O’Connell made a name for himself playing delinquents. Has he changed? Not if his new role is anything to go by

“I’ve got gaping nostrils,” says Jack O’Connell, wiping his nose with a tissue he’s rescued from the depths of his back pocket. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed?” I hadn’t, actually, I say. “You’re just being polite, Louise,” he says, in that now recognisably deep, Derbyshire drawl. “Right, what was the question again?”

Chatting with O’Connell for 45 minutes is a disarming affair. Not just because we’re squished together on a table so tiny I keep accidently kicking the leg (and him. Sorry again, Jack). There’s his unquestionable charm, sure. The boyish grins. The effing and blinding his way through sentences. But there’s also a laddish, unpredictable side to him that bubbles under the surface of his Fred Perry polos. When we first sit down, I ask about his ShortList shoot. Does he enjoy those things? “Nah,” he says. “It’s f*cking boring, isn’t it?”

Or take the subject of his new play, The Nap. O’Connell plays a young, Sheffield-born snooker player, Dylan Spokes, who’s fending off pre-second round nerves, his ex-con dad and a local gangster called Waxy Chuff. In keeping with the play’s theme, ShortList arranged to meet O’Connell in a suburban town snooker hall, 20 miles from nowhere. As he expertly pots a red, then a blue, I mention the play is described as a ‘comedy thriller’…

“I dunno,” he interrupts. “I can tell you the name of the critic who wrote that. But let’s not, for security reasons.”You get the impression he’s caught between two Jacks: the burgeoning, hot Hollywood property who shakes my hand, dressed in Paul Smith jeans, swaggy Burberry jacket and one particularly expensive-looking Victorinox watch. But then the lad from Derby emerges, the one who graciously describes his upcoming film, HHhH, as a job “that’s torn me a new bumhole” and you can’t quite connect this Jack with the guy who Angelina Jolie once flew up to meet in her helicopter. “Sorry for the turn of phrase,” he grins.
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emily   –   February 07, 2016

Hi everyone! I wanted to let you all know that the site is now accessible at jack-oconnell.com. You can still access the site through jack-oconnell.net and jackoconnell.net too:)

Jack is featured in the March issue of Vogue UK. I have added two outtakes from the gallery and two digital scans from the magazine to the gallery!

Photoshoots & Portraits > 2016 > Vogue UK
Magazine Scans > 2016 > Vogue UK (March)
emily   –   January 14, 2016

I have updated the gallery with a few outtakes Jack did last year for British GQ!

Photoshoots & Portraits > 2015 > British GQ