Alex Lawther

Alexander Jonathan Lawther (born 4 May 1995) is an English actor. He made his professional acting debut originating the role of John Blakemore in Sir David Hare's South Downs in the West End. He made his feature film debut playing a young Alan Turing in the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game (2014), for which he received the London Film Critics' Circle Award for "Young British Performer of the Year" and was declared one of BAFTA's 2015 Breakthrough Brits. He achieved more mainstream success for his role as Kenny in "Shut Up and Dance", an episode of the Netflix anthology series Black Mirror (2016), and for portraying the lead role of James in the Channel 4 series The End of the F***ing World (2017–2019). His other notable work includes his roles in Freak Show, Howards End, Goodbye Christopher Robin, Ghost Stories, The Last Duel and Andor. On screen, he is known for his frequent portrayals of outsiders and eccentric characters. Early life Lawther was born in Winchester, Hampshire and raised in Petersfield. He is of English and Irish descent, possessing dual British and Irish citizenship through his Northern Irish father. The son of two lawyers (Yvonne Lawther; Michael Terrence), Lawther has described himself as having come from a "white middle-class bubble". As the youngest of three children, he said that his aspiration to be an actor came from having to make up his own games to entertain himself as a child. Both of his siblings live and work in the United States, with his older brother, Cameron Lawther, being an award-winning Hollywood film producer, and his older sister Ellie Lawther working in public policy. Lawther was educated at Churcher's College, a selective independent school in Petersfield. While at Churcher's, Lawther was heavily involved in the drama programme, where he played Ratty in The Wind in the Willows, Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, and Lucas in The Third Bank of the River. He was awarded the Sir Daniel Day-Lewis Award by the Petersfield Town Council. In 2009, a fourteen-year-old Lawther was allowed to write and direct his own full-length play based on a song by Sara Bareilles entitled Rejected Fairytales as part of his drama club involvement, where he received laudatory coverage in the local press as a "theatrical whiz kid".