The following essay is by Anthony Boyle, as told to Theo Bosanquet. Boyle stars on Apple TV+’s Masters of the Air and Manhunt, and Disney+’s Shardlake. This article has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.
I had Perthes disease as a child, which affects the bones. It meant I couldn’t walk for a number of years, and I couldn’t play sports like the rest of my family. So I spent a lot of time observing people. I’d watch their physicality and how they behaved around others.
I spent so much time not being able to be involved that when I could walk again and join in, I became the first to volunteer for anything. Since then, I’ve never been a wallflower. As Samuel Beckett might say, “Dance first.”
I got expelled from school at 16. I had behavioural problems and would do crazy shit; maybe it was something to do with being frustrated by my dyslexia, which I didn’t know I had until later. I’ve never really liked authority, so I didn’t respond to that in a positive way. I ended up going to an all-girls school in Belfast, which was an experiment where they invited 15 of the worst-behaved local lads to attend. Luckily, they had an amazing drama department, and I would just spend all day there. My “dance first” energy was celebrated, and I loved it.
On when he knew he wanted to be an actor
I remember being in a production of Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind, directed by Rachel O’Riordan. She asked us to bring in something that reminded us of the play and discuss it. I’d never experienced that kind of creative environment before, and I just sat there and thought, This is where I want to be for the rest of my life.
A couple of years later, an acting teacher called Patricia Logue from Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama came to see me in a play called Herons at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. Afterwards she said I should go and audition at the school. My audition was all over the place, but somehow I got in. It was a different world to what I’d been used to, but I had such a great time.
I left drama school early to do Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I was 21, and it just felt so huge, a real baptism by fire. On the first night, I remember walking out the stage door to thousands of people screaming, and thinking, Holy fuck – this is real. That role really set me up, especially winning the Olivier Award, which felt like a real stamp of approval. It changed everything for me.
“Manhunt” Courtesy Apple TV+
On stepping into new characters
When I approach a new character, I like to do as much research as possible. On Masters of the Air, I played Harry Crosby, a World War II navigator, which was basically like playing a real-life superhero. These were ordinary people, teachers, and lawyers, and 70% of them never came back from every mission. I don’t think we can even comprehend that kind of sacrifice through a modern lens, so I had to do the reading to try and understand it.
On what he’d tell his younger self
Enjoy the struggle. Breathe into it. I was reading a book recently, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, and there’s this brilliant bit: “If you trust in nature, in what is simple in nature, in the small things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness and knowledge.”
Just beautiful.
