“I definitely don’t have an overall arc in mind,” says Harris Dickinson when asked about his career goals. “I just want to work with really good people. And really well-written scripts are few and far between, particularly from writer-directors.” But Dickinson certainly found one in Babygirl, a fascinatingly ambiguous erotic thriller from Halina Reijn, the Dutch writer-director who previously made 2022’s Gen Z horror romp Bodies Bodies Bodies.
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“Working with people like Nicole is obviously a major thing for an actor like me [who’s] still sort of finding his place in the world.” This last statement doesn’t smack of false modesty given that Dickinson is talking about Nicole Kidman, the Hollywood icon whose fearless performance in Babygirl puts her on course for a sixth Oscar nomination. The film begins with Kidman’s character faking an orgasm during sex with her husband (Antonio Banderas), then sneaking off to masturbate to “daddy porn”.
Dickinson has been talking about Babygirl all day when we meet in a London hotel room that’s been reconfigured for a film junket: there’s a spotless coffee table between us with two glasses of water waiting. But even if he’s tired, he remains polite and on the ball enough to remember that we’ve met before – impressive given that it was nearly three years ago, right before the BAFTA Film Awards. Dickinson was up for the Rising Star prize, but lost out to Bond actress Lashana Lynch.
Babygirl looks set to continue Dickinson’s skyward trajectory. He gives a mesmerising performance as Samuel, a plucky intern at a New York tech company who enters into an intense psychosexual affair with buttoned-up boss Romy Mathis (Kidman). Samuel gleans, correctly, that Kidman’s seemingly steely CEO secretly yearns to be dominated, so he adopts the role of the “daddy” to her “babygirl”. During a standout montage, Samuel serves Romy a saucer of milk at his feet to the smouldering soul of George Michael‘s ‘Father Figure’. It’s an audacious, sexy and very funny moment that’s destined to become a meme.
So far, Dickinson hasn’t spawned as many memes as his contemporaries – Paul Mescal, say, or Timothée Chalamet – but his filmography could be the most interesting of any young actor. The 28-year-old from east London broke through with his brilliant performance in 2017’s Beach Rats, a queer coming-of-age film that dazzled that year’s Sundance Festival. He perfectly and often wordlessly captured the inner turmoil of a Brooklyn teenager who acts straight in front of his mates, but is hooking up with guys on the down low.
Since then, Dickinson has played a predatory drug dealer in 2019’s hard-hitting County Lines, a petulant model in 2022’s raucous comedy Triangle Of Sadness, and a flawed father in 2023’s poignant indie film Scrapper. He also gamely played the young Richard Attenborough in 2022’s fun whodunnit See How They Run and picked up another BAFTA nod for portraying a dour amateur detective in the offbeat TV series A Murder At The End Of The World.
The King’s Man, 2021’s flop Kingsman prequel, is a rare clunker on his CV. But Babygirl, which arrives a couple of months after Steve McQueen’s Blitz, in which Dickinson shines as a wartime firefighter, is another demonstration of his ability to inhabit tricky, enigmatic characters. His Samuel is intuitive enough to spot Romy’s kink for being dominated and cocky enough to demand her as his workplace mentor. But at other times, he struggles to keep a grip on their shifting power dynamic and makes strange choices that spook her.
“I think he’s frightened by his own behaviour – he’s terrified of himself,” Dickinson says. While Kidman’s Romy is accessing feelings that she’s previously kept hidden, Dickinson believes Samuel is exploring his own buried propensity for “rage and darkness”. He adds, intriguingly: “There’s almost a sort of mysticism that he taps into. It’s almost like, ‘Is he real?'”
So, could he also be a blagger? “Oh, he’s a blagger and an unreliable narrator for his own story,” Dickinson replies. “But that’s part of it. I think it’s important that we don’t understand too much about his backstory so that he can imprint on us.” Dickinson gently deflects when NME suggests that playing a conflicted dom daddy could be seen as “brave” or a big swing. “I think Nicole has to contest with a little more bravery than me,” he says, deferentially. “But I was definitely excited by the script because I was unsure of what it was, exactly.”
Dickinson is clearly a team player. He says his urge to act comes from “a deep insecurity, but also the need, or longing, to be a part of a bigger thing”. He felt “totally at home” the first time he stepped on a film set, at 20, to make Beach Rats. “There’s nothing like finding your community in a film set or theatre,” he says. “That’s a really cool feeling, because you’re kind of contributing towards something bigger.”
He also enjoys the opportunity to learn something new – about himself, human nature or the world at large – that acting provides. “That’s been an important lesson, because it wasn’t until I left school that I began to understand my own thirst for knowledge. It was only later that I started to tap into my own quizzical… What’s the word I’m looking for? Curious. My own curious nature.”
Dickinson attended his local comprehensive school in Highams Park, east London, but found lessons too structured and prescriptive. “It was all based on retaining information, then regurgitating it in a very formal way and I wasn’t very good at that because I didn’t care enough, or I didn’t have anyone that made me care.” He pauses to check himself. “Not to blame anyone. It’s probably my own fault. I was probably daydreaming.”
As a teenager, Dickinson spent his free time at a local performing arts club, RAW Academy, and in the Marine cadets. When he was cast in a play called Angels at London’s National Theatre, he gave up any military ambitions. He briefly attended film school, but dropped out after being patronised by a teacher he has previously called “a bit of a dick”. He then did all sorts of regular jobs, including picking up litter in Potters Fields Park near Tower Bridge, before a self-tape landed him Beach Rats.
He singles out Beach Rats, Triangle Of Sadness and now Babygirl as “pivotal” in his career. At the moment, he can still take the tube without being bothered, but slippery Samuel could make him into a hipster leading man. If he wants it, of course – Dickinson says today that he hasn’t acted “in like a year”. That’s because he’s focused on his first feature film as director, Limousine Dreams starring Frank Dillane (Renegade Dell, Joan), which he describes as “an urban odyssey about a guy coming out of homelessness”.
Today’s Babygirl press day falls in the middle of a gruelling 14-week edit to complete it, but Dickinson doesn’t seem fazed by his break from acting. “I don’t think I could go back-to-back [with roles] like some people,” he says. “I’d feel like I was drawing on the same stuff all the time – I need time to crack on with normal stuff. If your whole life’s on a film set, you do tend to turn into something else.”
‘Babygirl’ is out in UK cinemas today (January 10)