The 1999 movie that changed Callum Turner’s life: “That’s the beauty of films”
From early roles in the Fantastic Beasts franchise to becoming one of the most in-demand actors working today, the sharp-featured Callum Turner is enjoying all the spoils of the spotlight, and the world can’t seem to get enough.
It also helps that he just married one of the biggest pop stars in the world in a ceremony so lavish, an entire town got together to complain about it.
The current James Bond frontrunner began his career working on a number of low-budget student films. He got his first real break working for the legendary John Boorman in a film called Queen and Country, in which he starred opposite his ex-partner Vanessa Kirby. Given that this is how he entered the industry, it should come as no surprise that he has an appreciation for the plucky British indie.
Speaking to Starburst magazine in the mid-2010s, a baby-faced Turner revealed that one of his favourite films of all time is 1999’s A Room for Romeo Brass, a Shane Meadows-directed comedy-drama centring on two young boys (Andrew Shim and Ben Marshall) who meet a strange adult named Morell (Paddy Considine). He starts out friendly, but when it becomes apparent that he harbours desires for Romeo’s sister, Ladine (Vicky McClure), things quickly take a dark turn.
“It’s a really beautiful, beautiful film,” Turner said, “I learned from that film not to trust people that want to hang around with kids. When I was growing up, there was a few people that wanted to do that, and I was always wary of them and wouldn’t get involved in those situations. But you can learn from anything. You can learn from Billy Elliot that as a working-class kid you can do whatever you want. That’s what films do. That’s the beauty of films.”
Meadows’ third feature film, A Room for Romeo Brass was his first collaboration with Considine. The two men would become pivotal to each other’s success, later going on to make Dead Man’s Shoes and Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee.
It didn’t receive a lot of attention upon its release but has certainly found an audience in the years since. It has a host of celebrity fans, including Robert Pattinson and, strangely, Bob Mortimer. Turner is in very good company there.
He might look and sound like he was born with a whole tray of silver spoons in his mouth, but Turner comes from very humble beginnings, growing up in the wealthy London borough of Chelsea, with a single mother living on a council estate. He used modelling and later acting to elevate himself out of that world, but it’s clear that he hasn’t forgotten his roots.
A darkly funny, brutally honest portrayal of working-class British life, A Room for Romeo Brass embodies so much of what makes Meadows such a fascinating artist, and Turner was absolutely spot on to single out its genius. Perhaps we’ll get a Meadows-Turner collaboration one day, if the latter isn’t too busy with his MI6 duties.
