Owen Cooper’s mum Noreen has a video of her son, then aged three, dancing in the living room of the family home in Warrington.
Dressed in a red onesie, his piercing blue eyes peering out from beneath a mass of dark curls, he is jumping around to the pop song Gangnam Style, jiggling his hips and waving his arms in delight.
In another video, from 2014, he’s lining up plastic zoo animals on the floor while singing enthusiastically along to the soundtrack of The Lion King.
When he was younger, Noreen fondly nicknamed him ‘my mini Harry Styles’.
He may not have had a shred of acting experience before his chilling star turn in the Netflix drama Adolescence, but it seems Owen Cooper was always destined to be a performer.
However, even Noreen, 51, could not have predicted her youngest son’s meteoric rise to fame, with Adolescence surpassing 24 million viewers in its first week and critics dubbing him a ‘once-in-a-generation talent’.
Nor could she have imagined that this week she would be swapping her three-bed terrace in Cheshire for Knole, a 600-year-old former royal residence in Kent, where she’s accompanying Owen as he films his next big role: playing the young Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.
The pair, wrapped up against the cold March wind, were pictured walking around the grounds as Owen’s co-stars – no less than A-listers Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi – filmed scenes for the hotly anticipated adaptation due for release next year.
Young Owen Cooper has become a household name overnight after starring in the new hit series Adolescence on Netflix
In the series, Cooper plays Jamie Miller, a young 13-year-old boy accused of the murder of a girl in his year at school
Owen Cooper’s mum Noreen (pictured) has a video of her son, then aged three, dancing in the living room of the family home in Warrington
For Owen, a soft-spoken, unassuming 15-year-old who was ‘discovered’ less than a year ago, it has been a remarkable 12 months.
Last March, he was still kicking a football around the council estate where he lives with Noreen, dad Andy and one of his older brothers, Ollie, 20.
Now, after that devastating performance as schoolboy Jamie Miller, an intelligent, outwardly ordinary, teenage boy accused of murdering a girl in his class, he’s tipped for silver-screen success – and been compared to a young Leonardo DiCaprio.
Meanwhile, actor Stephen Graham, who co-wrote the script and also plays the role of Jamie’s father, has described finding Owen as the ‘biggest achievement’ of the four-part series.
This week, the two actors appeared in a TV interview alongside Hollywood legend Robert De Niro, who offered some words of wisdom to the young star, telling him to ‘keep at it’.
It’s a long way from Warrington, that’s for certain, where locals say the Cooper family are ‘never home’ these days.
‘Owen is always away,’ neighbour Christine Walker, 75, who has known him since he was a baby, told the Mail this week.
‘His mum is with him and his dad goes a lot, too.’
Certainly, Noreen will do whatever it takes to support her son, spending the past few years making the hour-long round trip to Didsbury, Manchester, where he enrolled in Tuesday night classes with a drama group in 2022.
Until recently, Owen was a student at a Catholic high school on the other side of town. Neighbours recall seeing him, in his navy blazer and striped tie, cycling to school where he excelled at German and PE, and had plenty of friends
Outside school, he looked forward to weekend matches with the Warrington Rylands Under-15s
Acting does not run in the family: Noreen is a carer and dad Andy, 44, works in IT. Ollie, and Owen’s older half-brother Connor, 30, are both electricians.
‘I never wanted to be an actor,’ Owen admitted in a recent interview. ‘It wasn’t really in my DNA.’
Indeed, from a young age, football – not drama – was his passion, and neighbour Christine admits she thought she ‘might see him on television one day, but on a pitch not on a set’. She recalls: ‘He is a big Liverpool fan, and he was always out at the front of the house on the grass playing football. He would use the trees as goalposts.’
At school, the nearby St Benedict’s Catholic Primary, Owen was a quiet pupil, polite and well-behaved, but full of energy. He joined the local Beaver pack and Noreen signed him up to classes at Warrington Gymnastics Club. Another neighbour, Madeleine Rigby, 79, described him as a ‘lovely young lad’.
‘He would run errands for me in the past,’ she added. ‘He and his family would do absolutely anything for you if you asked.’
In this small close, where the Coopers have lived in their neat £135,000 terrace for the past 20 years, everyone knows everyone.
Noreen, whose family is Irish, has a strong bond with all three of her boys and Owen has grown up close to both his elder brothers.
Photographs from Noreen and Andy’s wedding in September 2019 show all three, dressed in matching grey suits, with their arms around their mum.
Owen stars on the show alongside Stephen Graham, who plays Jamie’s father, Eddie Miller
Christine Tremarco (left) plays Jamie’s mother in the four-part Netflix hit
Noreen and Andy have worked hard to treat their boys, taking them on trips to Legoland and London, and splashing out on family holidays in the sun. There were also regular match days at Anfield to watch their favourite team in action.
Until recently, Owen was a student at a Catholic high school on the other side of town. Neighbours recall seeing him, in his navy blazer and striped tie, cycling to school where he excelled at German and PE, and had plenty of friends.
Outside school, he looked forward to weekend matches with the Warrington Rylands Under-15s.
A source at the club describes the midfielder as a ‘sound lad’ from a ‘great family’, adding: ‘Everyone here will help keep his feet on the ground.’
When he wasn’t practising his ball skills, Owen could be found on his phone, reposting videos on social media, or playing PlayStation with friends, something he’s missed since hitting the big time.
‘My dad didn’t want me to have a phone,’ he admitted in a recent interview – somewhat poignantly, given the themes of Adolescence, which centres around toxic masculinity and the damaging influence of ‘incel’ culture on online forums.
‘When I was about 11 or 12, my mate’s mum secretly gave me one, and I persuaded my dad [to let me keep it].’ His TikTok account, on which he has 5,000 followers, is just like any other 15-year-old’s: full of football videos, video game hacks and memes about school.
At home, Owen is something of a film buff, counting Terminator and the Marvel superhero franchise among his favourites. One day, he admits: ‘I want to play Spider-Man.’
When he wasn’t practising his ball skills, Owen could be found on his phone, reposting videos on social media, or playing PlayStation with friends, something he’s missed since hitting the big time
Owen has received widespread praise of his impressive acting skills at such a young age
Adolescence has gained much attention for the light it has shed on the dangers of technology and the influence of social media
The show is on course to smash all streaming records as viewers binge-watch the heart-wrenching mini-series
But it was watching Tom Holland, then aged just 15, in The Impossible – about the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami – that stirred something unexpected in him.
Soon after seeing the film in 2021, he signed up to The Drama MOB, a Manchester-based acting school co-founded by former Coronation Street star Tina O’Brien, in a bid to emulate the powerful performance he’d been so moved by on screen.
‘I was just doing it for a hobby and didn’t expect much from it,’ he has admitted. His drama teacher, Alex Edge, told the Mail Owen was ‘a very talented member of the class’, whose ability ‘shone through’ from the start.
‘Owen was always fantastic at improvisation and always seemed to think very deeply about the character he was portraying,’ she added.
Director Esther Morgan remembers him taking part in annual ‘showcases’ with the school, describing him as a ‘gifted actor’.
It was through The Drama MOB, early last year, that Owen came to the attention of casting director Shaheen Baig, who was trawling the UK in search of a boy to play Jamie.
She contacted community drama groups and youth clubs rather than formal acting schools; they wanted someone with rough, unvarnished talent.
The critically acclaimed four-part production is uniquely shot in nearly hour-long continuous single takes
The drama sees Stephen Graham portray a distraught father struggling to cope with the actions of his son
His teacher suggested Owen, then 14, apply, which required him to record videos of himself acting out two specific scenarios.
‘In the first one, you had to pretend to go into a headmaster’s office and act like you’ve not done anything at all – but you actually haven’t, you’re innocent,’ Owen has revealed.
‘And then in the second one you had to act like you haven’t done anything wrong – but you really had.’ Thousands of tapes poured in, and the search was whittled down to 500 boys.
When Owen made it to the final stage, a ‘chemistry read’ with Stephen Graham along with four other candidates, it was immediately apparent he was right for the role.
As soon as he left the room, Graham turned to the rest of the team and said: ‘I think that’s him.’ Owen found out he’d got a part last May – but not the one he was expecting.
‘I was there with my mum and at that point there was a chance that I could play the role of Ryan [Jamie’s schoolfriend].
‘So, when it was the role of Jamie, I was like ‘What?’ I’d been asleep in the car before we arrived and I’d only just woken up. I was on a different planet and just thought, ‘This is mad!’
Filming started in July in Liverpool and Sheffield, and lasted four months.
But this was filming quite unlike anything even the more experienced cast members – including Graham himself and The Crown actress Erin Doherty, who plays child psychologist Briony – had done before.
Each hour-long instalment of Adolescence was shot in a single take, a challenging exercise for any actor, let alone one who had never been on a set before.
The idea was to allot five days to each episode, with a take being filmed every morning and afternoon, giving the actors, crew and director ten chances to perfect it.
Ashley Walters (pictured) plays DCI Luke Bascombe in the series, who arrests young Jamie in episode one
This style meant Owen had to rote-learn an hour’s worth of dialogue, and stay resolutely in character as cameras circled him. After just two weeks of rehearsals, he was ready to start.
The first scene to be filmed was episode three, a gut-wrenching exchange between Jamie and Briony, much of which Owen has revealed was performed off-the-cuff. In one now-viral moment, he yawns – entirely spontaneously and off-script – as the psychologist questions him.
On set, Doherty improvised the line: ‘I’m sorry. Am I boring you?’, and his response – a genuine smirk – became part of the finished episode.
When Owen first saw the script, co-written by screenwriter Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, he ‘gave notes’ to the adults on teenage slang.
Graham explained. ‘He really made it his own.’
Owen had an acting teacher on set, and the constant support of Graham, who has form for taking younger actors under his wing. When he acted alongside a teenage Jodie Comer in police drama Good Cop he was so impressed by the youngster he introduced her to his agent, who then went on to represent Comer – something the actress referenced in her acceptance speech when she won the leading TV actress Bafta in 2019 for her role in Killing Eve.
And in 2007, the 51-year-old actor developed such a close bond with 13-year-old newcomer Thomas Turgoose, his co-star in This Is England, that he offered to adopt him when the star’s mother died of cancer during filming.
There was also a psychologist on hand, to ensure Owen could cope with the darker parts of the storyline – but, exhibiting maturity beyond his years, he didn’t need any help.
‘She couldn’t find him,’ director Philip Barantini has said of the psychologist’s interactions with him. ‘He’d be off playing swing ball.’ A ‘blown away’ Barantini adds: ‘This was his first ever job. A lot of actors can’t do what he can do. He doesn’t even realise it. He’s so blasé.’
After filming – mostly during the summer holidays – wrapped last autumn, Owen returned to school, where he was pleased to find his classmates were supportive of his new career.
‘I thought they’d take the mick,’ he admits. ‘But they’ve been really, really good about it.’
For a teenager who is quite so new to the industry, one senses the praise of his peers is what matters most.
Pride is also swelling on his street in Warrington, where neighbours are thrilled for the young boy they’ve watched grow up.
Madeleine Rigby is delighted he was able to get her Graham’s autograph, while Christine Walker jokes: ‘When he is really famous, I have asked for a house.’
She jests, but ‘real’ fame might not be far off.
There’s a buzz around Owen’s next role, in filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s £62 million adaptation of the Emily Bronte classic, featuring Saltburn star Elordi as the elder Heathcliff and Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw.
Owen had to agree a sabbatical from school for filming, but is continuing his studies with the help of a tutor on set and Noreen.
‘What a journey,’ she wrote online, alongside a photograph of her, Andy and Owen, beaming in their seats as the credits rolled at last month’s Netflix launch.
One suspects the journey. for this young star, is only just beginning.
