Leading Light

Micheal Ward’s star is firmly on the rise. Upon taking the lead in Sam Mendes' new film, he tells James Mottram about his footballing prowess, working with national treasures and fighting racism

'Bro, it was insane to be working with these people,’ says Micheal Ward, reeling off a list of his co-stars in Empire Of Light, the new film from director Sam Mendes: we’re talking the likes of Olivia Colman, Colin Firth and Toby Jones here. ‘These people are national treasures,’ he adds. ‘To be a part of that, for me, is such a blessing.’ Yet the 25 year-old Jamaican-British actor is there entirely on merit. He’s already featured in TV show Top Boy, won the BAFTA Rising Star Award, and starred in films like BlueStory, TheOldGuard and Steve McQueen’s LoversRock.

In Empire Of Light, he plays Stephen, a young man living in a British seaside town in 1980 who gets a job in a local independent cinema run by Firth’s Mr Ellis. There, he befriends Hilary (Colman), the deputy manager who suffers from bouts of depression (a character based partly on Mendes’ own mother). ‘In those moments, I really felt a connection with Sam, what he witnessed. I've never witnessed mental-health issues like that so it was good to understand and learn about it. Any opportunity to learn a lot more is always a great opportunity.’

The film also sees Stephen confronted with varying degrees of racism, from violent National Front louts to a hate-filled customer. The latter was a particularly difficult scene to film, says Ward. ‘It’s so slow and menacing,’ he says. ‘I felt like in that moment, this is a lot of what my people used to go through.’ Ward, who grew up in Hackney and Romford after his family moved from Jamaica when he was four, thankfully hasn’t endured what his character goes through. ‘If that happened to me now, it’d be like, “Whoa!” That’s not something I’m used to. Someone like Stephen, he’s used to it.’

That said, he’s not naïve enough to think that racism has been eliminated in Britain. Far from it. ‘It’s still here, still present. All we can do is just keep trying to progress in a positive manner. Every single day we do that together, it’s going to make progress; whether it’s in ten years, 20 years, 100 years.’ He pauses. ‘Even a Black man playing a Black role . . . before they used to have people doing blackface. And seeing Black stories being told a lot more; Black leads in films like Empire Of Light, playing with amazing actors like Colin Firth and Olivia Colman . . . it’s a beautiful thing.’

Ward is next up in Thea Sharrock’s The Beautiful Game, co-starring Bill Nighy, a story about the Homeless World Cup, a real-life football tournament that aims to tackle homelessness. An avid Arsenal fan, Ward was a keen footballer in his youth. ‘Maybe I would have been in, like, a League Two team or something. I wouldn’t be higher up. I played a lot but it never looked like it was going to be something where I could be one of the greatest.’ He smiles. ‘I'm not saying that’s how it looks for acting. But that is something I aspire to.’

Empire Of Light is in cinemas from Monday 9 January.