Stephen Graham names the most important role of his career: “Without sounding too wanky”
Stephen Graham is one of those actors who is so naturalistic on screen that you could easily believe he wasn’t acting at all.
This isn’t ideal for a person who has historically played violent gang members, but it does indicate what a force he is in every performance. It’s strange to see one of the country’s most reliably brilliant actors become a global star in his fifties after decades of impeccable work, but if anyone deserves it, it’s Graham.
Behind all those menacing, volatile performances is an honest to God artist whose abilities extend beyond the screen. This was made abundantly clear in 2025, when Adolescence, a Netflix series that he co-created and co-wrote with Jack Thorne, became one of the biggest talking points of the year and even got a shoutout from the Prime Minister. Nowadays, he’s a multi-time Emmy winner and Bafta nominee, and if he decides to bring his writing skills to movies, he’ll probably win an Oscar, too.
This is pretty heady stuff for a Kirkby lad who grew up in a working-class family about as far from the bright lights of Hollywood as it’s possible to get. But while most might think that his big break would be his involvement in the hit Guy Ritchie comedy Snatch or Martin Scorsese’s historical epic Gangs of New York, he remembers an entirely different project that was much closer to home.
Speaking to Channel 4 in 2015, Graham singled out his role as skinhead Combo Gascoigne in Shane Meadows’ 2006 drama This is England, “It was the kind of role I’d been waiting to play for years… As an actor, you really want to challenge yourself… when someone gives you the chance to create a character like that, it’s just a wonderful gift.”
The film is a coming-of-age story about a bullied 12-year-old named Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) who finds a community in a local group of skinheads, where Combo is the violent, bigoted leader who becomes a father figure for the boy, and the movie is now recognised as a landmark in British cinema because it is unwavering in its portrayal of despair and nationalist hatred without oversimplifying any of the characters.
For Graham, it was the opportunity of a lifetime, but one that came with real-world consequences: “Without sounding too wanky, you have to show bits of your soul… If I’m really honest, there’s been many a time when I’ve gone back to my hotel room and phoned Hannah, my wife, and been in tears.”
This authenticity is all up there on the screen, and it’s one of the main reasons that This is England is so moving, yet it’s hard not to feel bad for the guy, because between This is England, his heart-stoppingly stressful performance in the kitchen drama Boiling Point, and his portrayal of a father whose son has committed an unfathomable crime in Adolescence, his therapy bill must be astronomical.
Maybe someone can give him a role in a Wes Anderson movie next time, he deserves a break.
