Nico Mirallegro

Nico Cristian Mirallegro ( ; born 26 January 1991) is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Barry "Newt" Newton in the soap opera Hollyoaks (2007–2010), Finn Nelson in My Mad Fat Diary (2013–2015), Joe Middleton in The Village (2013), and Johnjo O'Shea in Common (2014). His feature film credits include Spike Island (2012), Anita B. (2014), The Pass (2016), and Peterloo (2018). Recognised in 2012 by Screen International as one of its "Stars of Tomorrow", he has been lauded as one of the United Kingdom's "most promising young actors". Among his award nominations are those for Best Actor at the BBC Audio Drama Awards (2016, for Orpheus and Eurydice) and Best Supporting Actor at the BAFTA Awards (2014, for The Village). Early life Nico Cristian Mirallegro was born on 26 January 1991 in Heywood, Greater Manchester. His Italian father is from Sicily and his Irish mother, Maureen McLaughlin, is from Malin Head. He briefly attended a boarding school outside the UK, at which he was lonely and felt out of place. He also attended Siddal Moor Sports College in Heywood and the Manchester School of Acting. His parents are separated and his father lives in Spain, with Mirallegro having moved there as a teenager to live with him for a time. He is conversational in Italian and Spanish. Mirallegro says that he "fell into" acting in his mid-teens after following his sister Claudia to improv classes. At one of his first acting classes, he was "so scared [he] had to get one of the other lads to say [his] lines".