Latest news with #Lawtey
BBC News
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Mr Burton: Harry Lawtey on the privilege of portraying Richard Burton
The actor playing a young Richard Burton in a new biographical film has described how much of a privilege it was to take on such an "iconic" role. Harry Lawtey said he was aware of the pressure of being an Englishman portraying the "Welsh hero" in Mr told Lucy Owen on BBC Radio Wales: "It was daunting, for sure."Trust me, it's certainly not lost on the gumption of some English lad turning up to play the quintessential Welsh hero, which he is."The film is about Burton's early life growing up in the Afan Valley, Neath Port Talbot, and has been released to mark the centenary of his birth. The 28-year-old star of BBC drama Industry became fascinated with the Welsh Hollywood legend after watching a play about Burton's relationship with his director, Sir John Gielgud, in 2023. "It's probably one of my favourite plays I've ever seen. And I became sort of briefly obsessed with Richard Burton for a week or two after that," he weeks later he got the audition to play Burton on the big screen. Lawtey researched Burton's life by watching his back catalogue, reading biographies and "all of his diaries, which were just amazing, to get detail, information and kind of nuance about the guy". Born in Oxford, Lawtey had to put on a Welsh accent and learn some Welsh. "We start the film with this strong Port Talbot accent and some Welsh language too, and over the course of the film he has to uncover this RP (received pronunciation) voice, we call it in the business, which is quite a well-spoken, proper, quite Anglified accent, really, that we've kind of come to recognise in Richard with those hints of Welshness in there as well," he said. On learning to speak some Welsh lines, Lawtey said he felt almost "embarrassed" but had support from the Welsh speaking writer, producer and director. "Those are the ones that were giving me recordings that I could follow and kind of try to hone as best as I could," he said."You know, it really mattered to me, deeply, more than anything else, that aspect of the film felt as authentic and true and respected as possible, because it's so significant in Richard's story and his life." Bafta-winning actor Toby Jones plays Burton's teacher who discovered his talent for acting. Lawtey said filming alongside Jones in Burton's home village of Pontrhydyfen was like a life-imitating-art experience. "This film is a story of mentorship, I suppose, and if you speak to any actor worth their salt, they'll have had many people over their careers who kind of given them something of themselves and kind of push them on their way. And Toby certainly represents that for me." Mr Burton, produced by Severn Screen, BBC Wales and Ffilm Cymru Wales, was released in UK cinemas on 4 April 2025.
The Independent
30-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Harry Lawtey on playing Richard Burton: ‘He felt embarrassed being an actor – it wasn't a manly thing to do'
The first time many of us saw Harry Lawtey, he was naked, glassy-eyed, fresh from vomiting on a sheet of newspaper, and rubbing a near-empty bag of drugs across his gums. Then we watched him head to the office. That was five years ago, in early scenes from the hit drama series Industry, in which he played an investment banker. And now, as the star of a new biopic of the Welsh film star Richard Burton, Lawtey slurs, stumbles and punches his way through a booze addiction. 'I'm not a big drinker, really,' the 28-year-old muses over Zoom, smiling sweetly. 'I was a late bloomer with alcohol so I had a few years of feeling detached from it. You learn a lot about the nature of what being drunk does to people and the kind of things it amplifies. I just think it's something to be mindful of.' Thoughtful, softly spoken, and possibly even a little shy, Lawtey couldn't be further removed from the characters he tends to play. Speaking to me from his London home, he sits in front of a backdrop that offers various clues about his personality. There's a Beatles poster, several plants, and what looks like Nivea hand cream. Were it not for the gold-lettered GQ award behind him – he was one of their Men of the Year 2024 – you'd think he was just another well-groomed Gen-Zer. Albeit one with an erudite vocabulary, a dash of imposter syndrome ('I still get a bit queasy referring to myself as an artist'), and a self-diagnosed penchant for rambling, for which he apologises after we spend 10 minutes discussing barriers for working-class kids in the arts. Along with Back to Black 's Marisa Abela and Bodies Bodies Bodies star Myha'la, Lawtey is part of a crop of Industry cast members who've been propelled to movie stardom since the show's launch. (Last year, Lawtey was one of the stars of the panned musical sequel Joker: Folie à Deux.) But while Abela and Myha'la are set to return for the show's fourth season next year, Lawtey has departed. Fans were bereft. As Rob, a cocaine-fuelled cad turned lovestruck soft boy, Lawtey exuded an endearing fragility that transformed him into one of the show's most popular characters. He tells me that his decision to leave wasn't taken lightly. 'It was something I thought about for a long time,' he says. 'Ultimately, I reached a place with Robert where I felt like I'd said everything I had to say with him. It was like we'd completed his arc. And I was just ready for a new chapter.' That new chapter is why we're speaking today. In the moving biopic Mr Burton, in cinemas next week, Lawtey plays a young Richard Burton, then just a humble miner's son, before the stage and Hollywood came calling. For Lawtey, the part is a bold, risky swing. People have to have different ideas, otherwise things don't get made with the right intentions. 'Joker 2' was made with ambition, creativity, and the desire to do something unique and brave 'The burden is definitely not lost on me – the gumption of some English lad turned up to play the quintessential Welsh hero,' he laughs. It is, he acknowledges, a massive responsibility, one that came about serendipitously after Lawtey had seen The Motive and the Cue, Jack Thorne's play about Burton's relationship with Sir John Gielgud during a 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet. 'I became briefly obsessed with Richard Burton for a week or two afterwards,' he recalls. 'Then a month later this opportunity drops into my inbox.' After sending in a self-taped audition, Lawtey went for lunch with the film's director, Marc Evans. 'It was very, very nerve-racking,' he recalls. 'Of course, I was overjoyed to get the job. But I was also scared.' Mr Burton tells the story of one Richard Jenkins, the 12th of 13 children born to a barmaid – who died when he was just two – and an alcoholic coal miner. It was a schoolteacher named Philip Burton (and played with superb warmth in the film by Toby Jones) who spotted Jenkins's raw acting talent and eventually adopted him – hence why Jenkins took Burton's surname once he began acting professionally. It was with Philip's guidance, and that of his landlady, Ma Smith (Lesley Manville), that Richard secured his first acting gig. Of course, a major part of Burton's story was his alcoholism – the actor died in 1984 at the age of 58 after suffering a brain haemorrhage – and the self-destruction that often accompanied it. Mr Burton ends too early in the actor's life for us to see him go on to meet Elizabeth Taylor and embark on one of the most volatile celebrity relationships of all time, but that feeling of impending doom lingers. 'There's a very confused kind of trauma in Richard that led to his drinking, partially because of his dad and also his muddled nomadic childhood,' Lawtey says. The confusion, he speculates, spawned from an identity crisis; as part of Burton's rags-to-riches story, he famously changed his voice, training to replace a thick Welsh accent with the deep, sonorous and more socially accepted RP he'd become known for. 'This film is about how a voice speaks for us, and how we project who we are before we even get the chance to show people who we are,' Lawtey says. 'With Richard, I think his drinking relates to that dichotomy – he clearly loved performance, but he also felt embarrassed by being an actor. It wasn't a particularly manly thing to do.' I ask Lawtey if he thinks that the class barriers that affected Burton still persist today. After some back and forth, he suggests that it's a necessary conversation to have, but that 'it's important when having this conversation for it not to become some kind of witch hunt against fantastic actors who happen to be middle class'. He continues: 'We shouldn't gatekeep art in either direction. It's a flexible medium. You just have to make sure that everyone has their right to it and ultimately create structures at a grassroots level. As a young person, you have to feel like something is possible and within reach, or even feel as though you're coming up in a world where that kind of material can belong to you.' Lawtey had a peripatetic upbringing. His father's role as an aircraft engineer in the RAF saw the family debunk from Oxford to Cyprus when Lawtey was five. It was while there that he watched Oliver! and immediately caught the acting bug, later enrolling at the Sylvia Young Theatre School and, later, London's Drama Centre. He rose through the ranks quickly, landing his role in Industry shortly after his graduation. Hollywood came calling after that, starring opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in the musical sequel Joker: Folie à Deux as the dogged district attorney Harvey Dent (later the supervillain Two-Face). Despite its promising premise and cast, the film flopped, becoming a punchline for most of the recent awards season. During a tribute to victims of the LA fires, the city's fire department captain, Erik Scott, delivered one hell of a zinger: 'Our hearts go out to those who have lost their homes. And I'm talking about the producers of Joker 2.' 'For me, it's very much okay,' says Lawtey. 'I had the most wild, joyful experience of my life making that film. People might not love it; that's entirely up to them.' He laments that much of the film industry is dictated by predictability in a bid to boost commercial success. 'But there comes a line where people have to have different ideas, otherwise things don't get made with the right intentions. [ Joker 2 ] was made with ambition, creativity, and the desire to do something unique and brave. Ultimately, I would rather work in a structure that supports that.' It's a solid plan, particularly for someone like Lawtey who, for all intents and purposes, doesn't seem fazed by fame. Instead, he leans towards the avant garde, he tells me – projects that come with a somewhat smaller dose of notoriety. 'I'm in a really nice place with it wherein I think it's largely quite funny and silly,' he says of the attention he receives. People do come up to him on the street a little more than they used to but, aside from that, it's not too noticeable. 'It's present in my daily life and is something that I kind of have to participate in. But it doesn't affect anywhere I go or what I do, you know? At the moment, it's not something I think about a great deal.' That might soon change, I suggest, referencing how fan encounters with celebrities can become more invasive as a person's profile grows. 'Yeah, it can be jarring,' he acknowledges. 'But you just have to be normal, I guess. There's no reason not to be normal.' He takes a pause. 'I'm grateful for it but fame is certainly not the goal,' he says. 'I don't dream of becoming more famous.' 'Mr Burton' is in cinemas from 4 April
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Industry' Creators Explain Harry Lawtey's Exit Ahead of Season 4: ‘Sad We Couldn't Make It Work'
The news that Harry Lawtey would not be returning for the fourth season of HBO's 'Industry' left fans of the show set in London's ruthless world of finance feeling less than chuffed. For three seasons, Lawtey played Robert Spearing, the Pierpoint banker with working-class roots who evolves into one of the show's most empathetic characters: a banker with a conscience. Mickey Down, who created 'Industry' with Konrad Kay, told TheWrap that scheduling conflicts and Robert's arc reaching its natural end led to the decision for Lawtey not to reprise his role. Lawtey stars in the upcoming film 'Mr. Burton,' in which he plays young Richard Burton, and as the actor noted in a recent piece in The Telegraph, he will soon shoot 'The Billion Dollar Spy,' a Cold War thriller starring Russell Crowe and directed by Amma Asante. (Production on 'Industry' Season 4 begins this week.) 'We love Robert as a character. We love Harry as an actor. We think he's going to go into massive things — he already has done,' Down said. 'And it was, I think, a sort of mutual decision that we couldn't make it work for the time that we had, but also that we had reached the conclusion of the character. And I think Harry reached his own conclusion.' Robert ends Season 3 saying goodbye to Yasmin (Marisa Abela), the colleague he has pined for since day one, and leaving Pierpoint to try his luck in Silicon Valley. Over eight episodes, he becomes more cognizant of just how dehumanizing high finance can be and makes the choice to extract himself from a toxic environment driven solely by profit. 'When the character feels like they've had some sort of redemption, or they've found the light at the end of the tunnel, there is sort of no more to say,' Down said. 'I'm sad we couldn't make it work. But Harry had an amazing ending at the end of episode 8 of Season 3. And we gave him the redemption that I think a lot of the audience was craving because we put him through the ringer in Season 3.' Down and Kay would welcome Lawtey back if Robert's return made sense for 'Industry.' 'Creatively, we both felt like his story was done, but also, we were very much of the mind that we should leave the door open for him to come back,' Kay said. 'He didn't die of an aneurysm. He's just doing his own thing over here while the relentless world continues. And, you know, we'll see what happens with this story going forward.' 'We're hugely grateful for Harry for his work on the show,' Down said. 'He's a fantastic actor and I can't imagine he's gonna have trouble finding a huge role and then having a massive, massive career.' 'Industry' is now streaming on Max. The post 'Industry' Creators Explain Harry Lawtey's Exit Ahead of Season 4: 'Sad We Couldn't Make It Work' | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.
Telegraph
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Industry's Harry Lawtey: ‘A lot of actors, then and now, are quite liberal with their sexuality'
Harry Lawtey's drunk. We're in the pub in west London on a Monday – a Monday lunchtime – and here he is: eyes gone, slurring this way and that, basic motor skills lost. The carcass of a halloumi sandwich decays before him. 'So…' he begins, reaching for an empty glass, missing, then grasping it loosely, his wrist swilling around like he's holding a sparkler. 'You can see the brain making its choices, can't you? Any effective masking is gone. I pick up the glass and then…' His head flicks up, an index finger thrusts in the air. 'I realise I haven't finished my first sentence… I'm lagging, my body can't do things because my functions are down. I'm malfunctioning. And that's quite funny, isn't it? It's like watching a toddler.' Lawtey sets the glass back down. My requested 'How To Act Half-Cut' masterclass has concluded. Lamentably, actors don't really get drunk in interviews these days. Lawtey's had a beer with lunch, but a ginger one. 'You know,' he adds, 'I worked with an actor once who, before each 'drunk' take, would just spin around in circles until he almost fell over. And the scenes looked great. So there's no right way to do it.' Lawtey is a sensible man, the sort of 28-year-old whose Monday night plans go no further than 'the big shop at Lidl, then maybe the gym', but he's had plenty of practice playing a brand of bloke who's just the opposite: impulsive, idealistic, sweet but damaged. For the last five years, he's played youthful finance bro Robert Spearing in three critically acclaimed seasons of Industry. Now, he's portraying the original suave hell-raiser, Richard Burton, in Mr Burton, a film about the Welsh actor's beginnings. Both roles regularly called on those drunk acting abilities. 'I guess I have had to do it quite a few times now,' he concedes. Lawtey's in a faded off-white T-shirt, ankle-grazer beige jeans, Adidas Sambas and a baseball cap. Bashful and mannerly, he occasionally seems uncomfortable with the amount of natural charm he emits. Judging by the consideration a student-age waitress is paying to our table, she's either a huge devotee of The Telegraph or we have one of his many fans in our midst. I suppose we'll never know for certain. Industry, a BBC/HBO co-production, follows the chaotic lives of a group of 20-something graduates at a fictional London investment bank. In the early series, Robert was a Jack the Lad who'd mask his insecurities by shagging, snorting, smoking or shotting whatever vice was put before him. As a result, Lawtey says, some people have met him on nights out and 'assumed I'm a right sesh head'. The reality is far healthier. 'I was actually quite a late bloomer, drinking-wise. Over time I migrated towards it, joining in with friends, and realised what an amazing bonding agent it can be – especially in Britain.' In his shy, dry teenage years, Lawtey spent a lot of time observing. 'It's a mad thing, this completely legalised, mind-altering drug that in the wrong hands is entirely destructive. Maybe this is just indicative of the boys I call my friends, but we're all in a kind of ongoing dialogue with our own drinking, and there's no pressure or expectation.' In the week before Christmas, for instance, he met his three best friends for a pint. By chance, they all ordered 0% Guinness. 'We had a laugh but that was the end of it. And I think that's really cool.' He pauses. 'But drinking can be great as well! It just depends where you're at.' On either side of the Atlantic, viewing figures for Industry climbed with each series, while its stars – including the trio of Lawtey, Marisa Abela (Yasmin) and Myha'la (Harper) – have become some of the most in-demand young actors in Hollywood. Abela played Amy Winehouse in Back to Black. Myha'la played opposite Julia Roberts in the Netflix film Leave the World Behind. Lawtey was cast in Joker: Folie à Deux opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. Industry begins production on a fourth series this month, but Lawtey will not be returning. The named reason of 'scheduling conflicts' is technically true, given Lawtey is making the Cold War thriller Billion Dollar Spy with Russell Crowe in Los Angeles, but both actor and character were also ready for a new start. The finale of series three saw Robert happy and ambitious again in California, eyes firmly on the future. Lawtey could relate to that. 'Ultimately I feel like I'm in a place where I've said everything I had to say with a character, and I think both me and the writers felt mutually happy with where we left him,' he says. Lawtey has never actually seen Industry – 'I don't need to, it's not for me' – but he was happy with the conclusion. 'There was actually a stage direction after my final line, in my final scene of the show, which literally read: 'On Robert – transformation complete.' And that sat really well with me. 'Now, I feel unmoored, but in a really good way. And ready for the next chapter.' The production of Industry was based in Cardiff, and chance has seen Lawtey make four or five other things in Wales ever since he was a child actor. If a job is in the UK, he tends to drive himself from his home not far from here, and it's now at the point where crossing the bridge on the M4 is what he 'associates with going to work'. He laughs. 'People don't know how amazing Wales is. The girls on Industry used to say I could work for the tourist board.' But Mr Burton could hardly have been made anywhere else. It charts the beautiful and remarkable story of how Richard Jenkins Jr, a miner's son from Pontrhydyfen, in the Afan Valley near Port Talbot, and the 12th of 13 children, rose to become one of the most celebrated actors in the world in large part thanks to a schoolmaster, Philip Burton (played by Toby Jones), who spotted his talent. After the death of their mother when he was two, Richard was largely raised by an elder sister before eventually moving in with Philip, his acting tutor. The latter would become his legal guardian, and in 1943, Richard adopted his surname. In later life, Philip called Richard 'my son, to all intents and purposes'. The actor would write that 'I owe him everything'. Richard Burton has been played before, of course – notably by Dominic West opposite Helena Bonham Carter's Elizabeth Taylor in the 2013 film Burton and Taylor, and Johnny Flynn in the 2023 play The Motive and the Cue – but those portrayals have largely focused on the man as myth: crisp tailoring, tumbler in hand, stentorian purr, and never far from Taylor. 'It makes sense because he and Elizabeth were so vivid and sensational,' Lawtey says. 'Those [depictions] have always been interesting but not necessarily accurate or sensitive to either party. I'm a general sceptic of biopics, I think they rarely work, but I always think the best recipe is to hone in on a period and find a junction where you can find the DNA of a person.' He marinated himself in Burton's diaries, interviews, old footage and recordings. 'I can't think of another life in the public sphere where the distance between the place he begins and the place he ends is so phenomenal. It's the quintessential working class hero story. 'There's this amazing diary entry where he's thinking about who among his friends he'd like to be on a desert island with. He basically lists the most iconic figures of the day – JFK, Salvador Dalí, James Baldwin. All these people wanted a piece of Richard, and he's a miner's son from Port Talbot. So it'd be a fool's errand to try and tell that whole story.' He went through Burton's back catalogue 'very nervously, really, because I did feel the burden of it', and recalled something Abela said before Back to Black: 'At some point you just have to take some ownership of it, otherwise you're just going to be immobilised.' Abela suffered tabloid and social media scorn for playing Winehouse, long before anybody had seen her performance. 'Don't even get me started on that,' he says. 'Just as a friend it infuriated me, the lack of tact and awareness to allow that cycle to repeat in some ways. It was beyond nonsense.' After the halfway mark of Mr Burton, the action jumps eight years to Burton at the Royal Shakespeare Company. By that point he is closer to the legend we know: the sweetness has been tempered by ego and alcohol, and the voice has become the voice. 'You don't get actors these days who are identifiable by a single trait, but Richard came from a generation who were first and foremost orators. He's kind of literally the voice of a generation, a whole cohort listened to War of the Worlds. So that was an added pressure.' Sometimes he would be both Burtons – downtrodden, rugby-playing schoolboy then swaggering, chain-smoking celebrity; unvarnished South Walian lilt then RSC-trained baritone – all in the same filming day. 'They didn't feel like the same character at all. But are you the same person as you were eight years ago? There's an emotional spine that remains the same, but a casing, an armour, that's different.' Lawtey is impressive throughout, but particularly brilliant as the later, more age-appropriate Burton. He had the blessing of Burton's actor daughter, Kate, 'which meant the world'. The first time she visited the set to offer observations, Lawtey was terrified. 'Then within a minute of meeting her I was like, 'You're an idiot, he obviously belongs to her – he's her dad. He's someone's dad.' But she has such a spirit of generosity with sharing his memory.' Ultimately, Lawtey 'had to realise that I have him on lease. He doesn't belong to me, but for this period of time I'll take care of him… as wanky as that sounds.' Lawtey grimaces slightly, then shakes his head and laughs. 'But it's a wanky profession.' If it's on a menu, Lawtey almost always orders the halloumi. 'Squeaky cheese, we call it in my house. I ate copious amounts as a child,' he says. His parents met in Barton-upon-Humber, North Lincolnshire (he's a devoted Hull City fan), but his father's job as an aircraft engineer in the RAF saw the family – Lawtey has one elder brother, George – move to Cyprus after his fifth birthday. 'I was brought up on an island in the Mediterranean, but on a British military base you've got every regional accent. So my party trick became voices. My brother used to get me to put on accents for his friends. It was like conditioning.' His parents never put pressure on either of their sons to continue the family line of military men (George is a football analyst who's just finished a role at Swansea City), and later asked Lawtey if he'd like to go to drama school in London. He did. Aged 13, he auditioned for the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School and, thanks to scholarships and subsidies, started later that year, staying with a host family in term time. It was trying for a timid and anxious teenager, but acting became a relief. 'A distraction from life. Life's difficult. I was quite a sensitive, fragile but happy child, and this was just a great way for me to engage with the universe and activate me.' A few years later, his parents moved back to the UK – they're now based near RAF Brize Norton – while Lawtey enrolled at Drama Centre London. 'Trauma Centre', as its alumni half-jokingly call it. 'I only realised after I left but I chose the drama school that was most similar to the military. It was f—king rigorous, completely tribal and cultish and… brilliant. I loved every minute.' He's far from the only actor raised as a military brat. The itinerant upbringing, among all walks of life, where parental rank quietly looms over everything, makes code-switching a necessity. 'Of course, but we're a nation of code-switchers. My parents still do it, they're in a constant dialogue with their own class. Because we're obsessed with it as a country. 'Pretty much any piece of work I've done that I'm interested in – certainly Industry and Mr Burton – speaks to class. Acting is still about class. It's better than it was, but it's never going to be a meritocracy, that's just not the system we operate in.' Lawtey's own relationship with social class 'had become confused even before I got an opportunity to be on the telly, because I certainly didn't have the childhood my parents had, but they've coloured it with their perspective.' As a result, he may be on billboards in Times Square, feel familiar enough to drop the 'Lady' from Gaga when he talks about her, and find himself at the odd fashion show – he appeared in an advert for the designer Thom Browne – but he's tried not to get lofty. What's his most extravagant purchase? 'There's only one – a home. Genuinely, ask anyone.' (I later ask two of his friends, and they confirm it.) In fact, the first time Lawtey had a meeting with his agent at drama school, she asked what his long-term goal was, expecting, 'winning an Oscar '. 'I said I want to be a homeowner. She laughed and was like, 'All right, no one's ever said that before. We'll see what we can do…' But it was an emotional goal for me. Like, if my hobby can support my life, what a dream that would be.' Industry gave him that dream – as well as two 'lifelong friends' in the 'special people and true generational talents' of Abela and Myha'la. When the show started, it caused a sensation for its commitment to sex, drugs and rock 'n' bankrolling. The tone was set when Yasmin ordered Robert to masturbate in front of her in the office toilets, then eat the results off the mirror. And people say Gen Z are afraid of the workplace… Lawtey and Abela used to joke that they knew the show must be getting good when journalists stopped solely asking about nudity and intimacy co-ordinators. Learning how to take drugs was bad enough. Google helped, he says, as did a crew member who 'had a lot more experience in that area'. Robert, Lawtey says, was always a 'lost boy' who only began as a caricature. He and the young Richard Burton are, I point out, two charming men who attempt to break into a rarefied industry some believe they don't belong in. They've also got a sexual ambiguity about them. He weighs this up. 'Yeah, I think that's fair. They both had that. There were suggestions, I think, throughout Richard's life, though nothing necessarily concrete…' A smile dances across Lawtey's face. 'I think a lot of actors, then and now, are quite… liberal with their own sexuality. And why not, I suppose.' Is he? 'Er, I'd rather not speak about anything like that, the more people know me intimately, maybe the less interesting I am as an actor. Or less convincing. My favourite actors are the ones I know least about.' One of those favourites has always been Toby Jones, another Joaquin Phoenix. He first met the latter two years ago with the camera already rolling on Joker: Folie à Deux. Phoenix was in full Joker make-up as Arthur Fleck; Lawtey was the clean-cut antagonist Harvey Dent. Lawtey can be 'a complete neurotic' about work, and had a small crisis before that film. 'I was very, very nervous, I'd been working consistently for about 14 months and didn't feel match fit. But then the day before shooting started I just thought, 'It's too big to feel nervous. This is as big as it gets. If this isn't fun, go home. You're wasting your time.'' That freed him to put in what is perhaps the best performance in a film critics otherwise eviscerated. Gaga, he says, was 'so generous, so encouraging about my work'. Had she seen Industry? 'Ha, no. I don't even think Todd [Phillips, the director] had seen it. No one had a clue who I was, genuinely.' The limp critical and box office response 'didn't bother me in the slightest. Maybe that's easy for me to say as it wasn't resting on my shoulders, but I had a premiere in Leicester Square, and I remember being on the red carpet and seeing my parents seeing me in this world… I'd take that over a box office hit any day. 'The film is what it is, but I admire their appetite to take a swing. In the current climate it's easier than ever to sit back on IP and rest on your laurels, regurgitating safety. And they certainly didn't do that.' By now, people have compared Lawtey to all sorts – Jude Law, Daniel Craig, Michael Fassbender – and mooted him for everything from James Bond to the upcoming Harry Potter series (he dismisses both). As it is, he has Billion Dollar Spy and an unannounced TV series to get on with, but no bucket list. 'Not at all. Why would I? I have almost zero autonomy over my own career,' he insists. Ideally, he simply wants to build a reputation like Jones's, who never seems to choose a bad project. 'Don't chase being famous, just chase that: that people think whatever you do will be good.' Lawtey pulls his cap down. As we get up to mosey towards the Tube, talk returns to biopics. The thing you so often get from them, he says, is the impression that to be a brilliant artist, you have to be an insufferable person. 'And I suppose it's often true, but it certainly shouldn't be a prerequisite,' Lawtey says. 'I've been so lucky so far, working with some real elite talents. And that's my main takeaway: you don't have to be a dick.' He grins. 'It's really heartening.' Mr Burton is in cinemas from 4 April
