“It was literally undeniable”: the role Joseph Quinn knew he couldn’t refuse
It’s quite a journey from Clapham to the ‘Upside Down’, although some might say fighting a Demogorgon is preferable to navigating the line outside Inferno’s nightclub. But that’s the trip Joseph Quinn has taken in a monumental few years for the young British actor.
It’s only been ten years since Quinn graduated from drama school and won a part on the BBC period drama Dickensian, before doing another one in Howard’s End and then landing a small role in Game of Thrones as a soldier. From there in 2018, he took on his first film role in Overlord, which is well worth a watch if you haven’t seen it.
Produced by JJ Abrams, it’s a brilliant mash-up of Second World War grit and behind-the-sofa body horror, packed full of disturbing special effects and ‘nope, don’t go in that room’ moments. It flew very much under the radar but ranks as one of the more underrated action movies of recent years.
After that, Quinn got his big break, getting cast as Eddie Munson in the Netflix sci-fi smash Stranger Things, although Covid-19 took it away almost as fast, with filming delayed until 2021. Once the fourth season was released in 2022, Quinn was noticed for his performance pretty much immediately, emerging as a standout from what was considered by many as the best instalment of the show.
He picked up industry awards nominations for his work on the show and quickly began to be seen all over the place in the US, being cast in the horror follow-up A Quiet Place: Day One and then, in a huge development for Quinn, the sequel to one of the greatest movies of all time, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.
Quinn told L’Officiel: “I watched it (the original Gladiator) when I was about 12 or 13, and was spellbound by it. That kind of filmmaking doesn’t happen all the time. Ridley Scott is very good at it, and I was aware of the fact that coming close to that world again was something that wouldn’t sit well with some people. I agree that it is a masterpiece, and it’s sometimes better to leave these things alone.”
But obviously Quinn wasn’t going to do that, not with the calibre of people involved in making the movie that had been some 25 years in the works since Russell Crowe picked up a Best Actor Oscar for the memorable Roman epic. Plus, there was the chance to work alongside Denzel Washington, who is also one of the greatest to ever appear on the big screen, quite aside from essentially being as cool as it is possible to be.
Added Quinn: “It was literally undeniable; I would not have been able to deny that opportunity.”
After the success of the sequel, which brought in almost half a billion at the box office and featured Quinn playing Emperor Geta, he moved on to another movie that should be on more people’s ‘to watch’ lists, the frankly nail-biting Alex Garland-directed Iraq war drama Warfare from earlier this year. Co-starring fellow British actor Will Poulter, it drops the viewer right into the middle of a house under siege as a small U.S. army unit try to battle their way out. It is tense and trim and doesn’t let up for the entire run-time.
Quinn then cemented his rise with a Marvel movie, bagging the part of the Human Torch in the ‘yet another one’ reboot of The Fantastic Four, First Steps, alongside Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, by virtue of which he will also get to appear in the two final Avengers movies, Doomsday and Secret Wars, which will arrive in 2026 and 2027.
Perhaps more intriguingly, he has also signed up to play George Harrison in Sam Mendes’ upcoming four-film retelling of The Beatles’ story, the other Fab Four members played by Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson and Barry Keoghan. There’s no footage as yet, but this week it was confirmed that Saoirse Ronan has also joined to play Linda McCartney.
