Jack O’Connell, the Derbyshire actor who shot to fame as the chaos-hungry Cook in Skins, is enjoying one of the busiest years of his career in 2026. As of October 2026, the 36-year-old has four major projects stacked up: he plays newspaper editor Larry Lamb in Danny Boyle’s Murdoch drama Ink (premiered at Venice in September 2026, cinemas in December), he was reportedly spotted filming A Quiet Place Part III in New York, he is attached to Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, and he has just been cast opposite Odessa A’zion in the flat-Earther romantic comedy The End of the World as We Know It, which begins shooting in Canada in November 2026.
It is a remarkable position for an actor who, less than twenty years ago, was a working-class teenager from Alvaston with a failed football dream and no obvious route into the industry. Since then, O’Connell has built one of the most interesting British acting careers of his generation — moving from feral teen roles into prestige television, a Hollywood war epic, an awards-bait prison drama and, most recently, a full-blown horror renaissance. This is the story of where Jack O’Connell is now, and where he is going next.
Who Is Jack O’Connell?
He is an English actor born on 1 August 1990 in Alvaston, Derbyshire, making him 36 as of October 2026. He is best known for playing James Cook in the E4 teen drama Skins, Louis Zamperini in Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken — the film that won him the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2015 — and more recently for standout roles in SAS: Rogue Heroes, Sinners and Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later. What sets O’Connell apart is his raw, physical screen presence: a blend of vulnerability and menace that made him unforgettable as a teenager and has only deepened as he has moved into adult leading-man territory.
Before acting took over his life, O’Connell’s dream was football. He came through the youth ranks and had trials with Derby County, but injuries ended that path, and a difficult adolescence followed — his Irish father died of pancreatic cancer in 2009, when O’Connell was just eighteen. Acting arrived almost by accident: he made his screen debut in 2006 as Pukey Nicholls in Shane Meadows’ cult film This Is England, and by 2009 he had landed the role that would change everything — the gleefully self-destructive Cook in Skins.
Jack O’Connell’s 2026 Lineup: Four Films at Once
As of October 2026, O’Connell has arguably the most crowded slate of any British actor his age, with four major film projects converging at once. The year opened with his appearance in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Danny Boyle’s follow-up to the 2025 zombie sequel, in which O’Connell plays the cult leader Jimmy Crystal. The film continues the story begun in 28 Years Later, and O’Connell’s sinister, charismatic turn has been singled out as one of the highlights of the new chapter in Boyle’s infected-Britain saga.
Beyond the released work, three major projects are in various stages of production or pre-production. The biggest prestige play is Ink, Danny Boyle’s newspaper drama about Rupert Murdoch, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 2 September 2026 and lands in cinemas on 11 December 2026 before heading to Netflix in the US and Latin America on 8 January 2027. O’Connell plays Larry Lamb, the ambitious editor of The Sun, opposite Guy Pearce as Murdoch — a dream team-up with the director who launched his horror-era career.
Then there is the franchise work. O’Connell was reportedly spotted filming A Quiet Place Part III in New York City in June 2026, suggesting he has joined one of horror’s biggest series for its third instalment — though plot details and his character remain tightly under wraps. On top of that, he is attached to Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, the next entry in Legendary’s MonsterVerse, which would mark his biggest-budget production to date. And just as the year seemed full, came the left-field surprise: his casting opposite Odessa A’zion in The End of the World as We Know It, a romantic comedy about two star-crossed loners trying to prove the Earth is flat, due to shoot in Canada from November 2026.
Danny Boyle’s Ink: The Larry Lamb Role
The most significant role of his 2026 is Larry Lamb in Ink. Directed by Danny Boyle from a script based on James Graham’s celebrated stage play, Ink dramatises the birth of the modern tabloid — the moment Rupert Murdoch bought The Sun in 1969 and installed the young, hungry Larry Lamb as its editor, unleashing a circulation war that changed British journalism forever. For O’Connell, playing Lamb is a chance to show range far beyond the menacing outsiders he has played in recent years: Lamb was charm, ambition and instinct in equal measure.
The casting reunites O’Connell with Boyle, who directed him as the messianic Jimmy Crystal in 28 Years Later. That working relationship clearly clicked, because Ink was announced shortly afterwards — and the Venice premiere in September 2026 confirmed the pair’s chemistry behind the camera is matched by something special in front of it. Guy Pearce co-stars as Murdoch, setting up a gripping two-hander between a media empire’s ruthless owner and the hungry young editor who forged his most powerful weapon of all.
Timing-wise, Ink could be a career moment. A December cinema release positions it squarely in awards-season territory, and Boyle’s track record with festival launches speaks for itself. For British audiences, the story of The Sun’s rise is familiar tabloid mythology — but Graham’s play has always treated Lamb as its true protagonist, the outsider who saw what the public wanted before anyone else. If O’Connell captures that energy, Ink may finally give him the leading-film-role showcase his talent has been building towards for a decade.
From Skins Bad Boy to BAFTA Rising Star
Every great British acting story has an origin scene, and O’Connell’s is James Cook. Joining Skins in its third series in 2009, O’Connell played Cook — a swaggering, pill-popping, gloriously amoral teenager — with such ferocious energy that he instantly became the show’s most magnetic presence. Cook was chaos incarnate: funny, frightening and, in O’Connell’s hands, oddly sympathetic. The role ran across series three and four (2009–2010), with O’Connell returning for the show’s 2013 finale, and it remains one of the defining performances of British teen television.
But O’Connell refused to be typecast as the wild kid. His film work in the early 2010s showed startling range: he was Eric Love, the violent young offender at the centre of David Mackenzie’s prison drama Starred Up (2013), and the lost British soldier Gary Hook in Yann Demange’s Troubles thriller ’71 (2014). Both performances drew critical acclaim and marked him as a serious actor, not just a charismatic screen presence. The industry took notice — and Hollywood came calling.
The breakthrough arrived with Unbroken (2014), Angelina Jolie’s adaptation of the Louis Zamperini story. O’Connell carried the film as the Olympic runner turned Second World War prisoner of war, a physically and emotionally gruelling performance that announced him as a genuine leading man. The following year, the British public agreed: he won the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2015, beating a strong field and joining a list of past winners that reads like a who’s who of British acting talent. It was official — the Skins bad boy had become one of the UK’s most bankable young stars.
The Hollywood Breakthrough: Unbroken and Beyond
After Unbroken, he could have settled into a comfortable lane of studio leads. Instead, he made interesting choices. In 2017 he starred in Netflix’s western miniseries Godless, playing Roy Goode, the outlaw hiding in a town run by women — a performance that earned him a Critics’ Choice Television Award nomination and proved he could hold the centre of a prestige series. He has always gravitated towards difficult, morally complex men, and Roy Goode — capable of tenderness and terrible violence — was a perfect fit.
The 2020s brought a steady stream of high-quality British work. He starred in the BBC’s brutal Arctic drama The North Water (2021) as Henry Sumner, the ship’s troubled surgeon, opposite Colin Farrell’s terrifying harpooner Henry Drax, and since 2022 he has played a key role in SAS: Rogue Heroes, Steven Knight’s swaggering Second World War drama about the founding of the SAS. In 2024 he appeared in Back to Black, the Amy Winehouse biopic, adding another real-life figure to his growing gallery of intense, complicated characters.
What connects all of this is O’Connell’s refusal to coast. Where other actors who broke through in teen television chased franchise paydays, he chose auteurs and difficult material — Demange, Mackenzie, Jolie, Knight. It is a strategy that kept his critical reputation intact through his twenties and thirties, and it explains why directors of Danny Boyle’s calibre keep coming back to him. The 2026 slate is the payoff: a decade of respected choices converted into leading roles in major films.
The Horror Renaissance: Sinners, 28 Years Later and What’s Next
Something unexpected has happened to his career in the mid-2020s: O’Connell has become a horror star. It started with Sinners (2025), Ryan Coogler’s vampire epic, in which O’Connell held his own in a stacked ensemble — a performance that introduced him to a huge new global audience. Then came 28 Years Later (2025), where Boyle cast him as Jimmy Crystal, the leader of a deranged cult roaming the infected British countryside, all tracksuits and menace. O’Connell’s Jimmy was the film’s breakout character: funny, terrifying and utterly committed.
That role expanded in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026), which gave Jimmy Crystal more screen time and let O’Connell push the character further into cult-leader madness. The two films have repositioned him as one of the most exciting genre actors working today — proof that his trademark intensity, once deployed for kitchen-sink realism, works just as powerfully in apocalyptic horror. Critics have noted that his horror work shares DNA with his earliest roles: Cook’s feral energy, Eric Love’s violence, now channelled into the end of the world.
And the horror run is not over. His reported involvement in A Quiet Place Part III, spotted filming in New York in June 2026, would place him at the heart of one of the genre’s most successful franchises — a series built on exactly the kind of sustained tension O’Connell excels at. Details are scarce, as the production has kept plot and casting close, but the sighting alone was enough to send horror fans into speculation overdrive. Whatever his role, it confirms that O’Connell’s horror renaissance is a deliberate new chapter, not a coincidence.
What’s Filming Next?
The most intriguing item on his upcoming slate is also the most unexpected: The End of the World as We Know It. Announced around 5 October 2026, the film marks the feature directorial debut of Tom Berkeley and Ross White, the duo behind the Oscar-winning short An Irish Goodbye. Backed by StudioCanal, Working Title and Film4, it casts O’Connell opposite Odessa A’zion as two star-crossed loners on a mission to prove the Earth is flat — a romantic comedy with a gloriously absurd premise.
It is a genuine swerve for an actor known for intensity, and that is precisely why it is exciting. Berkeley and White’s An Irish Goodbye proved they can find warmth and humour in unlikely places, and O’Connell’s comic timing — visible in flashes throughout Skins and SAS: Rogue Heroes — has never had a proper showcase. Shooting begins in Canada in November 2026, making it the first project to take him into 2027 production. If it lands, it could do for his lighter side what 28 Years Later did for his dark side.
Also on the horizon is Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, the next MonsterVerse instalment. O’Connell is reported as part of the project, which would be his first true mega-budget blockbuster — a completely different scale from the mid-budget dramas and horror films that built his career, and a sign of just how far his stock has risen. Between a Murdoch newspaper drama, a Quiet Place sequel, a monster movie and a flat-Earther rom-com, his 2026–2027 run might be the most eclectic hot streak any British actor is currently on.
Conclusion
Jack O’Connell’s journey from a Derby County trialist with a shattered football dream to one of Britain’s most in-demand actors is a reminder that the best careers are built on interesting choices, not safe ones. From Cook in Skins to Louis Zamperini in Unbroken, from the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2015 to Jimmy Crystal’s cult-leader menace in 28 Years Later, he has consistently picked the harder, stranger, more rewarding role — and audiences have followed him every single step of the way.
As of October 2026, that long gamble is paying off spectacularly. With Ink positioning him for awards-season attention, A Quiet Place Part III and Godzilla x Kong: Supernova expanding his franchise footprint, and The End of the World as We Know It offering a completely new comic gear, he is not just having a busy year — he is having a defining one. If you enjoy deep dives into Britain’s most fascinating screen talents, you will also love our profile of Pauline Collins — from Shirley Valentine to a damehood, another career built on unforgettable characters. Whatever comes next for O’Connell, it will be worth watching.
FAQs
How old is Jack O’Connell?
Jack O’Connell was born on 1 August 1990 in Alvaston, Derbyshire, England, which makes him 36 years old as of October 2026. He grew up in a working-class household — his Irish father died of pancreatic cancer in 2009, when O’Connell was eighteen — and originally dreamed of becoming a professional footballer, even having trials with Derby County before injuries ended that ambition. He made his acting debut in 2006 in Shane Meadows’ This Is England and became a household name three years later as Cook in Skins.
What is he doing in 2026?
As of October 2026, he has one of the busiest slates in British film. He stars as Larry Lamb in Danny Boyle’s Ink, which premiered at Venice on 2 September 2026 and releases in cinemas on 11 December 2026 (Netflix US/Latin America, 8 January 2027). He also appears in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) as Jimmy Crystal, was reportedly spotted filming A Quiet Place Part III in New York in June 2026, is attached to Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, and has just been cast opposite Odessa A’zion in The End of the World as We Know It, shooting in Canada from November 2026.
Who does he play in Danny Boyle’s Ink?
In Ink, he plays Larry Lamb, the ambitious young editor Rupert Murdoch installed at The Sun after buying the paper in 1969 — the man who helped invent the modern British tabloid. The film is directed by Danny Boyle from James Graham’s acclaimed stage play, with Guy Pearce co-starring as Murdoch. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 2 September 2026, arrives in select cinemas on 11 December 2026, and streams on Netflix in the US and Latin America from 8 January 2027. The role reunites O’Connell with Boyle after 28 Years Later.
What is The End of the World as We Know It?
The End of the World as We Know It is an upcoming romantic comedy starring O’Connell opposite Odessa A’zion as two star-crossed loners attempting to prove the Earth is flat. Announced around 5 October 2026, it marks the feature directorial debut of Tom Berkeley and Ross White, the filmmakers behind the Oscar-winning short An Irish Goodbye, and is backed by StudioCanal, Working Title and Film4. Shooting is scheduled to begin in Canada in November 2026. The film represents a deliberate comic swerve for O’Connell, best known for intense dramatic and horror roles.
What was his breakthrough role?
His breakthrough was James Cook in the E4 teen drama Skins, which he played across series three and four (2009–2010), returning for the 2013 finale. His ferocious performance as the swaggering, self-destructive Cook made him the show’s most magnetic presence and a star overnight. He cemented his reputation with acclaimed film roles in Starred Up (2013) and ’71 (2014), then carried Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken (2014) as Louis Zamperini — a performance that won him the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2015 and launched his Hollywood career.
Is Jack O’Connell in A Quiet Place Part III?
As of October 2026, he is reported to be involved in A Quiet Place Part III after being spotted filming in New York City in June 2026, though neither the studio nor his representatives have officially confirmed his casting, and his character and plot details remain under wraps. The sighting was widely reported by film outlets including MovieWeb. If confirmed, it would continue his mid-2020s horror renaissance following Sinners (2025) and his breakout turn as Jimmy Crystal in 28 Years Later (2025) and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026).
Sources: Jack O’Connell — Wikipedia · Cineuropa — The End of the World as We Know It · Empire, Screen Daily, MovieWeb (2026 production reporting)
