Meet the new generation of acting stars on the rise this autumn

From the Stockwell lad winning plaudits at the National to the Burberry model starring in JK Rowling’s Strike, Frankie McCoy introduces the class of 2017
Frankie McCoy7 September 2017

Few things in life are as enjoyable as being able to say, ‘I told you so’ — particularly when an actor you have been raving about makes it and becomes the star you always said they were destined to be. The good news is that, right now, there is a whole group of bright young things about to step out of the shadows of the huge names they have already supported — we’re talking George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, all by the age of 16 — and into the limelight themselves. Look closely and take note: these are the kids you’ll be seeing picking up Baftas and Oscars in a few years’ time.

Amber Anderson

Born in Glastonbury and Steiner-educated (‘my childhood was pretty New Age, I grew up on a lot of homeopathy and organic veg’) until the age of 11, Anderson is a talented pianist, violinist and jazz singer, having studied at music school in Aberdeen after her parents moved there. Now based in Ladbroke Grove, she was scouted at 15 after a school friend persuaded her to enter a magazine modelling competition, and used modelling as a means to live in London. Now 25, she still models for Burberry, but currently her acting career is in the ascendance, with roles in the BBC’s Strike and London-set thriller In Darkness following later this year.

She spends her downtime drinking red wine at her local, Ariadne’s Nectar, and hanging out with boyfriend Jordan Stephens from Rizzle Kicks and her two cats Sooty and Jasper (‘I’m slowly convincing Jordan — he’s definitely more of a dog person!’)

DIANE VON  FURSTENBERG dress, £374, at matchesfashion.com

What’s your favourite food?

‘A Scottish delicacy you don’t get here, the macaroni pie — pastry full of macaroni cheese.’

Laurie Kynaston

Dogged perseverance and pretending to live in London got Kynaston his first agent: ‘When I was 19 I bought the Spotlight Contacts book and I started at A, writing to agents and saying I was living in London. By the time I got to G there were enough replies.’ Having grown up on a farm in north Wales, he got into acting to get out of lessons and, after doing time at the National Youth Theatre of Wales, the 23-year-old has starred in BBC2’s Cradle to Grave. Despite minimal theatre experience (‘I think because I didn’t go to drama school it’s a bit harder to get into theatre; all the guys my age have just finished, with four years of experience’), he has the backing of former Globe artistic director Dominic Dromgoole, and stars in the new film he has produced, Undercliffe. Kynaston now actually does live in London (Stoke Newington), and can currently be seen in cinemas as The Smiths’s Johnny Marr in Morrissey biopic England is Mine. ‘My favourite song has to be “How Soon Is Now?”’ he says, ‘because the song makes you feel like you’re on a journey; it’s almost like a train going down the tracks in that Johnny Marr riff.’

SANDRO T-shirt, £69; FOLK cropped trousers, £115, both at harrods.com. DR MARTENS boots, £135 (drmartens.com)

What was your first experience of London?

‘I remember catching the train to see my brother when I was 11 and walking down Ridley Road market, and it being such an attack on the senses for a boy from a farm in north Wales!’

Raffey Cassidy

Worsley-born Cassidy has been acting for more than half her life: the 15-year-old’s career accidentally kicked off when she was seven and waiting for her brother Finney while he auditioned for the BBC’s Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen in 2009. The producers suddenly decided they needed a little girl, invited Cassidy in and she won the part (her brother, who still acts, didn’t. Oops). Since then it’s been one starry production after another, from Tomorrowland with George Clooney in 2015 to Allied with Brad Pitt in 2016 — although her favourite role was playing the young Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman, alongside Kristen Stewart (‘I had a really cool daily training routine of swimming, gymnastics and martial arts for nine months’). The next big deal is creepy thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer (the cult film of early 2018, FYI) starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, in which Cassidy’s American accent comes from watching the Disney Channel.

TOPSHOP shirt, £29 (topshop.com)

What would you do if not acting?

‘I’d really want to be a fashion designer. Me and my sister are actually making a dress for my mum.’

Fisayo Akinade

As a young Mancunian, Akinade wanted to be a gymnast, before a back injury took him out of action. The athletics world’s loss ended up being acting’s gain, as he filled his Monday evenings with drama club instead. A production of August Wilson’s play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom reinforced his path: ‘It was the first time I’d seen black men on stage,’ he says. ‘And not just having a line or two. The story and storyline were about them. It really meant a lot to me.’ The 29-year-old has since starred in E4’s brilliant LGBT series Cucumber, and alongside Gemma Arterton in the National Theatre’s Saint Joan. Now in Forest Hill, he’s just finished a run of the Barber Shop Chronicles at the NT’s Dorfman (catch it when it returns this autumn); next he appears alongside Alex Hassell and Conleth Hill in the supernatural horror, The Isle. When he’s not acting, find him at Pizza Express, demolishing a Pollo Ad Astra.

AMI tee, £80 (amiparis.com)

Is there a problem with diversity in the industry?

‘Riz Ahmed’s speech in the House of Commons was brilliant. He said it’s not about being diverse, you’ve got to be representative to tell diverse stories. It’s not just saying: “We did a black Julius Caesar.” You’ve got to tell stories from those communities.’

Kae Alexander

GoT fans, look closely and see if you recognise Alexander. Granted, it’s not easy, given that the 32-year-old played one of the Children of the Forest, Leaf, in series six: so heavily made-up, with prosthetics glued onto her entire body, that ‘I was getting picked up at midnight to get into make-up at 1am, to be on set for 10am!’ Born in Kobe, Japan, at the age of 10 she moved to north London, where she became obsessed with Pineapple Studio classes and, aged 14, got into acting after she was dragged down to an opening day at the BRIT school by a friend. Since then, she’s appeared alongside Jack Whitehall in school comedy Bad Education and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the brilliant sitcom Fleabag, and has just finished filming Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One (‘He caught me crouched under a table drinking coffee and came and talked to me!’) and playing a journalist in Gloria at Hampstead Theatre (did it make you want to be a journalist? ‘Absolutely not!’). Catch her taking over the Beeb next, with roles in David Hare’s thriller Collateral and Neil Cross’s Hard Sun, both out next year.

DAVID KOMA dress, £785 (davidkoma.co.uk). Shoes, Kae’s own

Where do you hang out?

‘I go climbing at The Arch Climbing Wall in Bermondsey; it’s a really nice place to socialise and get your mind off things, and it’s great for co-ordination and core work.’

Jess Barden

It was Dolly Parton who inspired Barden to seek something other than working nine to five: ‘I remember being three years old and my auntie listening to Dolly Parton. Then I saw an album cover with Dolly on it, and I was like, “I want to be famous.”’ Luckily ITV used to make its children’s TV shows in Yorkshire, so the Wetherby-born Barden swooped in as an extra, and worked her way down to London at 16 with a part in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem at the Royal Court in 2009. An angst-ridden turn as the eponymous star of the Channel 4 drama, Ellen — a performance fuelled by a painful, real-life break-up — followed in 2015. Next? The 25-year-old is spearheading Netflix/E4’s big dark comedy of the autumn, TEOTFW (The End of the F***ing World), in which she stars as misunderstood teenager Alyssa: ‘I’d have loved to have seen a character like Alyssa in a film or TV show when I was younger; she does exactly what she wants to do and doesn’t try to fit in with anyone.’

TOPSHOP dress, £245 (topshop.com)

Fashion inspiration?

‘Anything Michelle Pfeiffer wore in the Nineties: she always has the best gold hoops and really cool denim jackets.’

Joe Quinn

The Stockwell-based Quinn got into acting because ‘I didn’t need A levels to go to drama school’. After a stint at LAMDA, the 23-year-old played Arthur Havisham in the BBC’s Dickensian in 2016 and the period drama work continues later in the year when he’ll play poor Leonard Bast in Kenneth Lonegarn’s adaptation of EM Forster’s classic Howard’s End. Currently he’s back in the present day, starring in the National Theatre’s sold-out production of Mosquitoes, alongside Olivia Williams and Olivia Colman, one of his idols (‘I couldn’t talk to her for the first three days because I was just staring at her thinking, “That’s Sophie from Peep Show!”’). In his downtime, it’s all about the theatre (he name-checks Angels in America as a recent favourite and says he ‘met Andrew Garfield outside The Understudy bar, when we were both pissed’) and spends a lot of time hanging out in ‘Brixton, Peckham, Soho. Such a cliché. Painfully millennial’.

OUR LEGACY jacket, £260, at mrporter.com. JOHN ELLIOT T-shirt, £75, at harveynichols.com. SANDRO trousers, £210, at harrods.com. WHISTLES shoes, £175 (whistles.com)

What do you do to get in shape for performing?

‘Before Mosquitoes I was in impeccable shape, but the 17-year-old I play wouldn’t care about his aesthetic body-wise, so I’ve kind of let it go. It’s for the part!’

Jade Anouka

Acting was always more of a ‘hobby’ to Camberwell-based Anouka, who comes from a family of ‘numbers people’. ‘I genuinely grew up not knowing that you could be a professional actor,’ says the 28-year-old. Nonetheless, her drama teacher (shout-out to Mrs Forbes) insisted on getting her funding for the National Youth Theatre, and while she was still filling in her UCAS forms to do computer design, she found out that she had a place at Guildford School of Acting. A successful audition at the Royal Shakespeare Company for The Penelopiad in 2007 followed, and she quickly became one of Phyllida Lloyd’s key actors in the director’s all-female Donmar Shakespeare trilogy (‘Meeting Phyllida changed my whole view about what performing Shakespeare could be’). She has just finished filming Mike Bartlett’s new thriller Trauma for ITV and makes poetry films in her spare time, roping in actors she has worked with (including Judi Dench). Her real goal though? Comedy: ‘I grew up obsessed with Jim Carrey. I would sit in front of the mirror and pull faces and move my eyebrows as much as I could.’

COS jumpsuit, £215 (cosstores.com)

Where do you watch films?

‘Peckhamplex is basically my favourite place to be. Everything you see there is so much more fun, it’s just such a vibe seeing stuff there. Especially comedy!’

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in