With the right actor, ambivalence can be enticing. If you can’t tell whether or not someone wants something, you lean forward. There’s suspense.
Ambivalence is part of the allure when it comes to Harris Dickinson, the British actor who first broke out with the 2017 indie “Beach Rats,” in which he played a sexually confused Brooklyn teenager. You were never quite certain what the character wanted and maybe he didn’t know, either. But because of that, and because Dickinson is the type of actor to never overplay his hand, even watching him do something small had you on tenterhooks.
Now 28, Dickinson has found the ideal vehicle for his stock in trade. In the new film “Babygirl,” he plays Samuel, an intern caught up in a risky affair with his married boss, Romy (Nicole Kidman). Their sexual chemistry is based on a dominant/submissive dynamic, though who has the most power is unclear: Romy has dominion over him in the workplace but in the bedroom, Samuel calls the shots.
Or at least, he’s supposed to. Part of the fun of “Babygirl” is that Samuel is not some steely sexual manipulator out of “Fifty Shades of Grey”: This wayward young man is making it up as he goes along. After commanding Romy to get on her knees, he might second-guess himself and apologize to her. Even Samuel’s more decisive commands can be a bit loopy: At a crowded bar, he orders a tall glass of milk and instructs Romy to drink it. Milk? Well, I guess there are no bad ideas when you’re brainstorming.
Precisely because Samuel is tough to pin down — and because, when he’s revved up, he might try to pin you down — the performance is beguiling and sexy, the sort of star turn that could become the cornerstone of a career. Dickinson has been in movies that popped, like “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Iron Claw,” but that’s not the same thing as popping yourself. “Babygirl” is likely to change that: After its August premiere at the Venice Film Festival made Dickinson the most lusted-after man on the Lido, Vulture ran an article musing that the movie had given Dickinson “something invaluable for a young actor,” a star image.
A few months ago, figuring that Dickinson would be eager to capitalize on his new heat, I asked his reps how soon the London-based actor would be coming to America to do press. The answer I got back was surprising: He wouldn’t be, as he was so deep into postproduction on his feature directorial debut that all “Babygirl”-related appearances would have to wait until the end of the year.
Was he really willing to let his big breakout moment pass without months of interviews and photo shoots? I couldn’t tell whether he really wanted this or not but I was, at least, leaning forward.
Then cooler heads prevailed. In mid-October, Dickinson was dislodged from the editing room and spirited to Los Angeles for a whirlwind weekend that involved “Babygirl” screenings, a starry, schmoozy gala at the Academy Museum, and lunch with The New York Times. Yes, ambivalence can be enticing. But in Hollywood, you can only play hard to get for so long.
ON THE DAY I met Dickinson at a Beverly Hills hotel restaurant, he was clad in a Spice Girls T-shirt and track shorts, marveling at the summery temperatures in Los Angeles well into the fall. Then again, he’d been spending most of his daylight hours inside, toiling away on the movie he had directed over the summer, which has the working title “Limousine Dreams.”
“It was hard to step away from something like that because it’s so all-encompassing,” he said of the film, which follows a young drifter who tries to reassimilate into London society. It’s the sort of leading role you might expect Dickinson to have written for himself, but he was certain he didn’t want to star in it and cast the actor Frank Dillane instead.
“The thing with acting that I find is that there’s many other things that get wrapped up in it, like vanity and self-confidence and insecurities,” he said. “With directing, that is also the case, but at least you have a team of people to lean on and support your vision. Whereas with acting, you’re on your own.”
Other actors have a tendency to preen for journalists but over lunch, I sensed that Dickinson was constitutionally incapable of that, preferring to stay within his own energy instead of endeavoring to impress. He was low-key in a regular-person kind of way, which perhaps explains why he is capable of much more naturalistic performances than many British actors his age.
In fact, aside from the good looks that got him cast as a model in “Triangle of Sadness” and earned him a Prada ambassadorship in real life, there was almost nothing about Dickinson’s manner that suggested you were talking to a movie star. I mean that, generally, as a compliment: Nothing feels performative about him except for the very thing he does for a living.
“He doesn’t show his hunger,” said the “Babygirl” director Halina Reijn, who described Dickinson’s sometimes complicated relationship with his career: “He wants to act, but it’s almost as if he has a love/hate relationship with it.”
In fact, Dickinson hasn’t acted since he wrapped “Babygirl” in January. “It’s been really nice, actually,” he said. “Acting is neurotic, always. I say that with great love for the neurosis, with great enthusiasm for that. But yeah, it’s complicated.”
What he finds most unnerving is when he taps deeply into his own psyche for a character, that private, ineffable thing is captured forever on film. “That’s a scary prospect, to put that out there,” he said. “Even if no one sees it, it’s still infinitely in the cinematic pool.”
Still, once he commits to something, he expects to offer up both body and soul.
“I’m pretty open and willing, maybe sometimes to my detriment,” he said. “I feel I’m too open sometimes and it causes me issues.”
For Reijn, who started as an actor before seguing into directing, Dickinson’s reticence is all too relatable. “Acting is like being an animal without a fur, being a person without a skin,” she said. “The more honest you are within artificial circumstances, the more exciting it gets, but to be that honest is pretty intense.”
And when you snap out of your performance and realize what you’ve shown people, it can all feel a little mortifying. Reijn put it bluntly: “We’re all standing around them in North Face jackets, eating a piece of pizza, saying, ‘Crawl on the ground, cry, undress,’ you know what I mean?”
When Reijn first pursued Dickinson for “Babygirl,” he had some hesitations. “There’s many films that have come before in this world that, to be frank, have been done badly,” he said. “And I was not scared of Halina doing that, but scared of my own ability.”
What sold him is that she wanted to portray the scaffolding behind the dom/sub dynamic. Any time he felt blockage in a scene, Reijn said the way through ought to be tapping into his character’s embarrassment: “She would be like, ‘This is all a performance, and you have to break the facade. You have to laugh.’”
Dickinson was also compelled by Samuel’s confusion, which he saw as emblematic of his generation. “We are going back to the idea of what it means to be a man nowadays in an ever-changing society,” Dickinson said. In one quiet moment together, Samuel even asks Romy whether she thinks he’s a bad person.
“He’s scared of his own darkness,” Dickinson said. “There’s a really dangerous thing going on with lonely, angry young men that are being ignored or pushed aside, and as a result, they’re becoming really toxic versions of themselves.”
Reijn concurred. “It’s obvious that men are confused, and I wanted that in the movie,” she said. “He’s someone you could see is struggling with, ‘What do you expect from me? Who am I allowed to be?’”
Again, Dickinson’s ambivalence came in handy. Even in the most explicit moments with Romy, like a fraught hotel-room encounter that ends with her on all fours, Samuel flicks in and out of character: He’s playacting masculinity, even though he still isn’t sure yet what it means to be a man.
“It almost looks like it’s improvised,” Reijn said, “but Harris uses his own shame in the scene, which I think is incredible.”
Dickinson told me he’s proud of what he put into the movie, even if certain moments felt so vulnerable that they become awkward for him to watch. One such scene is the charming highlight of “Babygirl,” in which Samuel dances shirtless to George Michael’s “Father Figure” for a bemused Romy. It’s sexy and silly, somewhere between peacocking and mating dance, and both times he filmed it, Dickinson just did what came naturally.
“Someone asked me yesterday how long it took to choreograph,” he said. “I was like, are you joking?” That was all him. Even the parts he wouldn’t normally want you to see.
MANY OF THE actors in Dickinson’s peer group can barely conceal their ambition. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing: Hunger can be a charismatic part of a star persona. But Dickinson’s ambition is more elusive, or at least more closely kept.
“I’m quietly competitive,” he admitted. “In many ways, British people particularly love to be humble and so I lead with that, of course, out of politeness. But deep down, no, I have big ambitions.”
As a young man growing up in a suburb of East London, Dickinson always had an affinity for filmmaking: He used to round up friends to shoot a weekly sketch show on his flip cam, and when he was 15, he applied to his local council for a financial grant to make a short film. Still, as the son of a social worker and a hairdresser, he didn’t see a viable path to Hollywood.
“I thought maybe I was foolish for choosing the arts or the entertainment industry, such a frivolous, unattainable thing,” he said. “What on earth was I doing even trying to enter that?”
Instead, Dickinson spent most of his teenage years in the Royal Marines Cadets, expecting to enlist upon graduation. The Marines at least offered a realistic option that could prove structure and a sense of masculinity.
“We’re all looking for our community, and I was desperately searching for it,” he said. “I think a lot of it was an element of performance, trying to be this other person, trying to cosplay as a more dangerous guy. It’s what we all do: We put on these fronts.”
In a way, that involved acting, too. So did the moments when the medical team needed training and his fellow cadets would prod Dickinson to play a wounded soldier: “They knew I was just a theater kid in the Marines. I couldn’t escape the fate, ultimately.”
An acting teacher further encouraged Dickinson to pursue performance, and though he was leery — “I wanted definitives, I didn’t want maybes” — he eventually decided to go for it. After years of fruitless auditions and frustrating pilot seasons that came to naught, he finally booked “Beach Rats,” then found his way to bigger productions, like the sequel to “Maleficent” and “Where the Crawdads Sing.” Said Dickinson, “I’ve ended up in this mad world and I’m like, ‘Yeah, this is obviously my tribe.’”
So even though acting can be neurotic, Dickinson isn’t about to turn his back on it just as his career begins to heat up. His most high-profile gig yet may be the one up next: It’s rumored that he will star in a forthcoming quartet of movies about the Beatles that will be directed by Sam Mendes. Dickinson would play John Lennon alongside the likes of Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney.
Perhaps that’s fitting, since “Babygirl” has already sparked feelings akin to Beatlemania. Reijn recalled that after one recent screening, she was mobbed in the bathroom by new and ardent fans of the actor: “The women were almost attacking me about him, asking, ‘What is he like?’” (When I asked Kidman about Dickinson, even she inhaled and cooed, “Isn’t he darling?”)
Knowing that early audiences have been ardent, is Dickinson prepared for “Babygirl” to change the way people see him?
“I don’t know,” he told me, shrugging. “I’m just doing my job, man. I just want people to enjoy it. Whatever happens, it’s beyond my control.”
Doesn’t he care at all about how he’s perceived? Dickinson laughed.
“No, come on babe,” he said. “Why would I? We’re all going to die.”
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