Stephen Graham names his four favourite movies
Being ambushed and asked to name your favourite anything can often lead to a complete and total mental blank – as if the name of every single movie, song, or food ever created escapes from the memory at once. Fortunately, Stephen Graham recovered well from being put on the spot to name his four favourite films of all time.
The actor is one of those performers who can always be relied on to give a performance that’s never anything less than solid, regardless of whether he’s playing Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire, a conflicted undercover cop in Line of Duty, a snarling hooligan in This Is England, or a conflicted prison guard in Time, to name but a few of his most memorable roles.
Of course, Graham also broadened his horizons and appeared in several Hollywood blockbusters, including forgotten Nicolas Cage vehicle Season of the Witch, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Dead Men Tell No Tales, the dismal Hellboy reboot, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. With that in mind, then, his quartet proving to be so eclectic makes a great deal of sense.
When pressed by Letterboxd for his four favourites while collecting the Richard Harris Award for ‘Outstanding Contribution by an Actor to British Film’ at the BIFA Awards, Graham’s first port of call was Ken Loach’s Kes, which he’d previously described to Metro as the film that “made me think that I could become an actor”.
Graham then opts to include The Godfather and The Godfather Part II as a single entry – checking that it’s within the boundaries of the rules – but not before noting that “you can keep Part III“. True Romance and Serpico round out the inclusions, making it seem fairly cut-and-dried that the star has a very soft spot for many of the greatest crime stories ever committed to celluloid.
However, he manages to sneak in a bonus contender after pausing for a second to ruminate on what should be his final port of call: “There’s loads of others, but I’m going to go for The Jungle Book.” Based on a filmography defined by intensity, a Disney animated classic may not stick out as one of the more obvious candidates, but Graham has never been shy in his admiration for the film.
Calling it his “first major cinematic experience,” he even revealed that he’s glad his children love it as much as he does because “that gives me an excuse to watch it again.” Sure, he may have misunderstood the question by listing five titles – six if you want to separate The Godfather Part II from its equally formidable forebear – but he deserves a pass for being put on the spot to begin with.
