“You Got the Pheromone”: Harris Dickinson Enters His Movie Star Phase

Most of us got our first glimpse of Harris Dickinson in Ruben Östlund’s 2022 wicked class satire Triangle of Sadness, where he played a vacuous male model forced to trade sexual favors for pretzels on a shipwrecked island. But the British actor was never going to be typecast as arm candy. In short order, he proved to possess extraordinary range, from posh period-piece Brit in See How They Run to Texas pro wrestler in The Iron Claw. But it’s in his latest film, Halina Reijn’s intense erotic thriller Babygirl, where Dickinson gets to showcase his skill as a confident, almost dangerously assertive seducer pulsing under the guise of a sweet, hapless intern opposite Nicole Kidman. It’s all amped-up sexual tension, until it’s all uninhibited sex, until it’s all hard truths and repercussions. But you didn’t come here for plot synopsis. At 28, Dickinson seems to be striding into some of the most exciting projects in film. He was in New York when he got on Zoom with his friend and fellow See How They Run castmate Sam Rockwell. They spoke about self-doubt, method acting, and being the British Brad Pitt.

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FRIDAY 9:30 AM OCT. 25, 2024 NYC

HARRIS DICKINSON: How are you, dude?

SAM ROCKWELL: Dude, why are you beating up Antonio Banderas [who plays the husband of Kidman’s character in Babygirl]? He’s a legend. He’s an icon.

DICKINSON: He is.

ROCKWELL: Why do you have to beat him up, man? He’s Zorro. What the hell?

DICKINSON: Because he tried to beat me up, Sam. He came to me. I tried to talk. [Laughs]

ROCKWELL: Alright. Where are you?

DICKINSON: I’m in New York. Where are you?

ROCKWELL: Oh, fuck. I’m in New York, too. Why aren’t we hanging out?

DICKINSON: I’m in a hotel in Tribeca.

ROCKWELL: You’ve been working constantly.

DICKINSON: Kind of. I did Babygirl, and then I took some time out to make a film. I don’t know if I told you about that when we worked together. It’s about this guy in London, a drifter. He’s someone who can’t keep a structure. He’s battling with homelessness.

ROCKWELL: Are you the lead guy?

DICKINSON: No, no, no. It’s a British actor, Frank Dillane. He’s really brilliant. So I’ve been working on that film all year. It was hard to get made, to be honest.

ROCKWELL: Does it have a Nil by Mouth vibe? Or is it more Ken Loach-y?

DICKINSON: It starts off in a pretty social-realist realm, and then there’s elements of magical realism that creep in. We did it in London, which was nice.

ROCKWELL: Are you a fan of directors like Loach, Mike Leigh, or Shane Meadows, who did This Is England?

DICKINSON: Yeah, of course. That was my bread and butter—all that my parents knew.

ROCKWELL: You’re originally from the East End?

DICKINSON: I was born in Leytonstone, which is more suburban—like the edge of East London and the beginning of Essex.

ROCKWELL: It seems like it was a little bumpy for you growing up. Did you have to fend off bullies and shit like that?

DICKINSON: I did, but I don’t think I was particularly picked on. I was a pretty chubby boy, and I hid behind comedy.

ROCKWELL: I know you used to skateboard and box a little. Did you make a decision like, “I’m going to get in shape,” or were you trying to meet girls?

DICKINSON: I did a little bit of sports. But everyone else was playing football and I didn’t really get into it.

ROCKWELL: I was useless in sports until I was bigger. I was terrible at everything.

DICKINSON: You’re a dancer though, aren’t you?

ROCKWELL: No, I faked dancing. That was just a way to meet girls.

DICKINSON: You can really move, man.

ROCKWELL: I can move, but I was never trained until Fosse/Verdon. When I met you in the rehearsals for See How They Run, you’d broken your wrist.

DICKINSON: Yeah. That was skateboarding. I’ve stopped.

ROCKWELL: Well, that’s fucking daredevil shit, man. That’s not a joke.

DICKINSON: I’m obviously not very good at it, because I kept breaking bones. I broke three bones in the space of a year and a half of skateboarding.

ROCKWELL: Do you like going to the gym?

DICKINSON: I kind of need to be told what to do in the gym. Otherwise, I just go and I do something for 10, 15 minutes, and then I’m like, “Oh, that was good enough.”

ROCKWELL: I didn’t even step into a gym until I was 26. I was wondering: You played Richard Attenborough in See How They Run. Was playing a real person daunting? Did you watch Jurassic Park like 5 million times to get him right?

DICKINSON: I don’t think I had the actual pressure to try and pull him off properly. The comedy of it all meant that I didn’t have to try and hone in to something so particular. Tom [George], our director, said, “Don’t try to do an impression.” But of course I watched a lot of stuff from him, a lot of interviews. How did you do it when you played George W. Bush in Vice?

ROCKWELL: I think you listen to the voice, and then you’ve got to marry the two. For Bush, I tried to get my voice deeper, because when you do the impression, it gets in your throat, which can make you dangerously uptight. Then I got a twitch, and it wouldn’t go away for four months. It was freaking me out. I went to doctors and I was like, “What the fuck is this?” I was doing all the Three Billboards [Outside of Ebbing, Missouri] press, and if I felt my chin twitching, I really thought something was wrong with me. It turned out it was just this muscle that I never used. I was doing my impression of George Bush for five fucking months, so this muscle got overworked.

DICKINSON: Oh, man.

ROCKWELL: What I liked about your performance as Attenborough is that you didn’t lose Harris. Like John Travolta in Primary Colors as Clinton. He’s still John Travolta, but he’s also Bill Clinton. Or Kurt Russell as Elvis, or Austin Butler as Elvis, or Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. You still see Michelle, but there’s Marilyn there. That’s the best. But I want to talk about your other roles, like Triangle of Sadness. You know I actually tried to get Woody [Harrelson] to come into the Zoom? He’s busy working. But let’s talk about Babygirl. Dude, you’re annoyingly handsome and talented in this thing. You’re like British Brad Pitt in this fucking thing.

DICKINSON: I’ll take that. He’s way smoother than me. I’ve met Brad a few times, and I’m always swept up in how smooth he is. I’m not smooth.

ROCKWELL: You got that too, bro. But I know what you’re talking about. There’s a Colin Farrell, Daniel Craig, Brad Pitt pheromone. You got the pheromone, too. You’re just finding it.

DICKINSON: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ROCKWELL: There’s a side of you in this film that I don’t think people have seen from you. Because in Triangle of Sadness, you did a similar thing that you did with Richard Attenborough. Again, you were willing to play the beta, which is so interesting for a leading man to do. I think it takes great courage. Here, we see a darker, more alpha side of you. I’m curious how you approached it. Were you nervous about doing these scenes with Nicole? Did you guys rehearse?

DICKINSON: I don’t know, I’m always very nervous doing that kind of stuff. It’s not only the vulnerability of it, but also just, how am I going to do this? In the wrong hands, it could have been very different. Our director [Halina Reijn] was very focused on trying to show the duality of two people navigating what it means to step into this dynamic, and all the bits in between. But some days you’re just thinking, “I don’t know how the fuck I’m going to do this.” And there’s no amount of prep you can do. I don’t know if you have that?

ROCKWELL: I never have that. I’m always confident. [Laughs] No, of course that happens and it’s terrifying.

DICKINSON: Yeah.

ROCKWELL: I mean, it’s an awful feeling. And all you can do is your homework, and then you don’t want to spend it in the rehearsal.

DICKINSON: I have this constant fear that even if the director’s saying, “Yeah, this is working,” in my head I’m like, “No, it’s not.” I just feel something deep inside that is wrong with it, and then maybe something happens that helps it or unlocks it. I don’t know if you remember the scene in the cheap hotel room, where Nicole’s character is sitting on the bed. That was a difficult one because it was choreographed as well. I don’t know. I think I’m really interested in the coward inside of myself.

ROCKWELL: Well, I’m assuming Nicole was just really generous with you?

DICKINSON: Have you met Nicole?

ROCKWELL: A couple of times. She seems very ready to do the work and get into the nitty-gritty.

DICKINSON: She’s really brave and willing to try stuff in all of the different areas, whether it’s right or wrong. And we’ll just throw it all out there and see, and I always admire that. What about you? Do you feel like you’re unafraid to go in any direction and try new things in a role?

ROCKWELL: I’m scared to death. I do a lot of preparation. I have an acting coach, a dialect coach, and I studied the Meisner technique for two years when I was, like, 23. That gave me a base, but then I had to work on my voice and stuff later on, when I wanted to do more theater. So I’ve done a lot of work, but I go to this acting coach, and I try to sit down with him and I problem-solve. And I read a lot.

DICKINSON: Do you find that doing that amount of work allows you to be freer?

ROCKWELL: I think so. I mean, I just worked with Juno Temple; she’s incredible. She doesn’t have any formal training that I know of, but she’s learned on-set training, and she’s as skillful as any actor I’ve ever worked with. And she’s a problem solver. She was doing that Christian Bale thing where she talks in the accent all the time, all day.

DICKINSON: Really?

ROCKWELL: Yeah, I didn’t even notice it until later.

DICKINSON: You didn’t do that on our film set, did you?

ROCKWELL: No, but I would listen to the accent all the time. In between takes, I’d fall out of it. But I did keep the accent with Bale on Vice. It was fun. But we wouldn’t talk about George Bush and Dick Cheney shit, we would talk about Bale and Rockwell shit, you know what I mean? Just in the voice.

DICKINSON: [Laughs] No way.

ROCKWELL: We’d keep the voice, but we’d be like, “How’s working with that Steve Zahn?” And he’d answer back like Cheney, and we’d talk about Steve Zahn for 20 minutes in the voices. But yeah, acting is so weird. [Laughs]

DICKINSON: You mean you stay in that voice even with your family and stuff ? No.

ROCKWELL: Fuck no. I go home.

DICKINSON: You hear about people doing that and you’re like, “What do you mean?”

ROCKWELL: I don’t even think Daniel Day-Lewis does that, does he? He goes home and watches The Simpsons or something, right? Maybe he does. I don’t know. Everybody’s different, right? It depends on the scene, too. Some scenes, I can’t talk to anybody all day, and other scenes, I want to talk a lot between takes, to stay loose. It takes years to learn how to navigate your energy on a set. And it’s hard to be nice, to be cordial, and also keep your energy and hold your space.

DICKINSON: I feel like I always fuck up. And I start to chat to everyone, and I’m like, “Yeah, how’s the kids?” And then by week two I’m like, “Oh man, actually, I’m tired. I need quiet.” But I don’t know how to navigate that.

ROCKWELL: It’s hard to learn that. It takes years to figure out, I know. I mean, it’s funny, somebody said to me, “You’re not here to make friends. You’re here to do a job.” But I don’t think you have to be a dick to be a powerful actor. But I think whatever works. Jack Nicholson does it one way, Sean Penn does it another way. Who are some of the actors you grew up watching?

DICKINSON: Just you, Sam.

ROCKWELL: That’s the right answer. And Woody Harrelson.

DICKINSON: I do love Woody. Whenever I see him in something, there’s a comfort with the space he holds.

ROCKWELL: Were you on set with him at all in Triangle of Sadness?

DICKINSON: No, our scenes never collided. But everyone loved him so much.

ROCKWELL: There’s something about Woody—you feel like you’re related to him. He makes a set really mellow and playful, and I feel very comfortable when he’s around. I don’t feel like I’m around a famous person. He’s got this weird calm thing, and he’s a little mischievous.

DICKINSON: Ralph Fiennes was a bit like that. He was super serious at times, and very diligent. But then he would also crack jokes.

ROCKWELL: He’s a great fucking actor, man. How did you get into acting? What made you want to do it?

DICKINSON: I went to a theater school, like an affordable drama club, basically, that was run by actors and ex-actors in East London. It was filled with a load of different kids from all different backgrounds, and we did plays and put on shows. The head of it essentially told me, when I was close to joining the military, “Don’t do that. That’s a very bad idea. Go and act.” Then there was a competition where the prize was to perform your play at the National Theatre, and we did that. I was just exhilarated by it, man, that first proper time with a good audience. After that, I sort of felt myself fall in love with it and was like, “I can’t really do anything else, I guess.” I wasn’t particularly well-behaved in school. I wasn’t that great with education.

ROCKWELL: Me neither. I barely got through high school. I didn’t go to college. I went to this performing arts school, but I was just fucking off. I actually almost flunked out of high school, and I joined this urban pioneer program, which was kind of like Outward Bound. It had a reputation for having all kinds of stoners and drug addicts, and the kids who were flunking. But actually, the guy who ran it was really amazing. And he got me back on track with acting. And then I just learned from a lot of people I’ve worked with. I watched them.

DICKINSON: For me, Phil Hoffman is one of the top-tier GOATs.

ROCKWELL: He directed me in a play. He taught me everything about stage acting. Phil was the best. Boogie Nights. Capote.

DICKINSON: And The Master. I also remember my mum put me onto Midnight Cowboy really young. I remember watching Dustin Hoffman in that.

ROCKWELL: You could have been Joe Buck.

DICKINSON: I always wanted to be Ratso [Rizzo]. So what are you working on right now? You’re chilling for a bit, you said.

ROCKWELL: I have a project starting in the spring. I’m just starting slowly. I don’t like to rush when I prepare, it stresses me out. I like to take my time, just start chewing it a little bit. I can work two hours a day at the most on a script. That’s just my brain.

DICKINSON: That’s a good amount of time, because it gets tedious. When I started doing this properly, I was like, “How do I structure my prep time?” Because I also had this expectation that I was supposed to sit at a desk and fucking go at it for, like, six to nine hours a day.

ROCKWELL: If you even do 30 minutes a day, you’re fucking winning. I know that probably sounds lazy to the civilians out there, but acting is a very different thing. You go from not working for six months to all of a sudden working a six-day week on night shoots in South Africa.

DICKINSON: I’m with you. Don’t you find being here, in New York, you’re overstimulated? We did Babygirl here, but still. In the city, it’s just like, whoa.

ROCKWELL: It’s intense, yeah. I’m going to L.A. tomorrow, and it’s going to be a nice break. The East Village is a lot. It’s a little mellower down where your hotel is.

DICKINSON: Yeah. I shouldn’t have stayed in the East Village when I was working. I had an apartment and people were ringing my buzzer at 4 a.m.

ROCKWELL: It’s pretty nuts.

DICKINSON: Sam, I don’t want to take any more of your time, man. I appreciate you doing this so much.

ROCKWELL: But is there anything else that we didn’t cover?

DICKINSON: No. We can always follow up if Interview needs us to say anything.

ROCKWELL: Yeah, dude. Alright. Call me every 10 minutes. [Laughs]

DICKINSON: Alright, mate. Big love.

ROCKWELL: You’re a badass, dude. You’re going to fucking take names.

DICKINSON: Thank you, mate. I appreciate you.

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Grooming: Rachel Lee using Koh-I-Noor and Oribe at Ma+ Group.

Skin: Hadia Kabir using Grown Alchemist.

Set Design: Spencer Vrooman.

Photography Assistants: Bailey Beckstead and Lili Peper.

Fashion Assistant: Kennedy Smith.

Set Assistant: Christian Duff.

Production Management: Vince Barrucco.