Who is Harris Dickinson? Babygirl star confirmed for Beatles biopic
Dickinson will appear as John Lennon, alongside Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.
The Beatles biopics will air in four parts, with each film focusing on a different member of the band and released simultaneously in April 2028.
Sony Pictures has described it as ‘the first binge-able theatrical experience’, taking a unique approach to tracking the rise of the Beatles through each of the musicians’ different lenses.
Let’s take a closer look at Dickinson and what he’s done before taking on the role of Lennon.
Where you might have seen Harris Dickinson before
The 28-year-old Leytonstone-born actor Harris Dickinson has developed a loyal legion of fans over the past couple of years.
Known to each other as “Dickheads”, said fans would absolutely balk at the idea that Dickinson is in any way an “unknown” to the wider world.
Dickinson has certainly excelled in role after role, from his breakthrough turn in gritty, coming of age film Beach Rats (2017), to playing a reluctant father in boisterous, big-hearted indie flick Scrapper (2023), to being a spineless model in Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winning Triangle of Sadness (2022).
He’s had mainstream success, too, as the lead character in the 2021 Kingsman prequel The King’s Man, opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones in Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) and as David, one of the cursed Von Erich brothers of 2023’s The Iron Claw. Dickinson has been on casting directors’ dream lists for years now, and has even spoken about the potential of playing Bond.
Getty Images
Yet, it is his 2024 role in Babygirl, opposite Nicole Kidman, that catapulted him into proper, fully fledged superstardom. Why? Well, it’s horny as hell. Simple, really.
Kidman recently discussed her experience filming the sex scenes in Babygirl with The Sun, saying she was “so turned on” at times that she had to pause production. “There were times when we were shooting where I was like, ‘I don’t want to orgasm any more,’” the 57-year-old actress shared.
“It was so present all the time for me that it was almost like a burnout,” Kidman said.
The film follows a high-powered CEO who puts her work and home lives on the line when she starts having an affair with her much younger intern, played by Dickinson. The trailer eludes to the film’s sexual content, with Dickinson exerting his power over Kidman in the bedroom, while she threatens him with her own power in the workplace.
A born and bred East Londoner
To make sure the Dickheads don’t count you as a fake fan, know this: Harris Dickinson is a born and bred East Londoner.
He was raised in Highams Park, in Waltham Forest, and still lives in a nearby area of East London to this day. He dropped out of school age 17 with a view to joining the Marines, only to be persuaded to return to acting by one of his teachers at RAW Academy.
“I was so close,” he recalled to the Standard last year, “I spoke to my parents about it. I don’t know what I was thinking. I think I crave structure, routine and purpose, I knew it would keep me focused. And acting didn’t feel like a real thing. But the Marines felt very tangible, very immediate.”
Getty Images for Vanity Fair
So he returned to acting and worked shifts in bars, or picking litter, or folding clothes at Hollister Co while putting himself forward for roles.
“I remember, I’d be in the basement folding clothes and I’d get a call from an unknown number,” he told The Guardian in 2022. “And an unknown number always meant it was my agent. So every time, I thought: ‘This is it! I’m out of here!’ And I’d rush upstairs and listen to the voicemail and they’d be like: ‘Yeah, you didn’t get it.’”
Dickinson’s return to acting quickly paid off. Within four years he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and Gotham Independent Film Award for his role in Beach Rats.
His career built slowly and steadily after Beach Rats, with a role in the BBC series Clique (2017), the FX series Trust (2018), and voice acting part in the Netflix animated project The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (2019).
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson at Venice Film Festival 2024
Getty Images
By 2021 he was leading projects, taking on the role of Conrad Oxford in the Kingsman prequel The King’s Man, and by 2022 he had starred in Triangle of Sadness, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. This gave Dickinson’s star power a real boost, and Babygirl went on to cement it.
It’s bad news for anyone looking to join him on his rise, though: Dickinson is in a long-term relationship with musician Rose Gray, and the pair can be seen looking happy and healthy together over on Dickinson’s Instagram, where he has over 447,000 followers.
Dickinson and Gray are co-parents to a “high maintenance” British shorthair cat called Misty Blue, who Dickinson says is “a lot of work – he’s a prince, but he’s worth it,” as per The Guardian.
So, now you’ve got the low down, be sure to keep an eye on Harris Dickinson in the Beatles biopic and beyond.
