Yesterday (May 04), Jack O’Connell visited CBS’s “The Talk“. Two photos have been added to the gallery thanks to Claudia! You can check out a clip of the interview below and find the full episode here.

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.”

I’ve updated the gallery with a new high quality production still of Jack in “Money Monster!”

Another poster of “Money Monster” has been released. Check it out below!

My copy of the 10th issue of Hunger Magazine finally came in the mail today from the UK. I have added scans from the issue to the gallery!

“Money Monster” is featured in the April 22/29 issue of Entertainment Weekly. You can check out a high quality digital scan from the issue in our gallery!

I have updated the gallery with a four new posters from Jack’s upcoming film “Money Monster” to the gallery!

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!

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

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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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.

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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