Alex Lawther

Alex Lawther, born Alexander Jonathan Lawther on May 4, 1995 in Winchester, Hampshire, England, is a British‑Irish actor, writer, and director known for his nuanced portrayals of outsiders and eccentric characters. Raised in Petersfield within a middle‑class family of two lawyers, he is the youngest of three children and holds dual citizenship through his Northern Irish father. Lawther’s early fascination with performance emerged when he created an illegitimate drama club at Churcher's College, earning a local reputation as a “theatrical whiz kid” and later receiving the Sir Daniel Day‑Lewis Award from the Petersfield Town Council. After a brief stint with the National Youth Theatre in 2010, he made his professional stage debut at sixteen as John Blakemore in Sir David Hare’s South Downs, a role that propelled him into West End stardom while still completing his A‑levels. His breakthrough on screen arrived with the Academy Award‑winning film The Imitation Game (2014), where he played a young Alan Turing, earning the London Film Critics’ Circle award for Young British Performer of the Year and a place among BAFTA’s 2015 Breakthrough Brits. Subsequent roles in X+Y, the BBC’s Howards End, and the Netflix anthology Black Mirror (as Kenny in “Shut Up and Dance”) cemented his reputation for delivering emotionally resonant performances in both period pieces and contemporary thrillers.

Since 2017, Lawther has become a cultural touchstone through his lead role as James in the Peabody‑award‑winning series The End of the F*ing World, a performance praised for its blend of dark humor and fragile vulnerability. He has expanded his repertoire with appearances in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, and the Star Wars spin‑off series Andor, while also embracing French cinema in Les Traducteurs and stage work such as The Tempest at Les Bouffes du Nord. Off‑screen, Lawther directs music videos and short films, including the acclaimed For People in Trouble (2022) produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. A self‑described technophobe, he avoids social media, actively supports climate, refugee, and LGBTQ+ causes, and splits his time between Paris and London, fluently speaking French and championing left‑wing political activism.