Joel Edgerton

An actor, screen­writer, direc­tor and pro­duc­er, Joel Edger­ton has become an indis­pens­able fig­ure in con­tem­po­rary cin­e­ma, assem­bling a body of work as dense and eclec­tic as his artis­tic tra­jec­to­ry.

Born in Black­town, Aus­tralia, he start­ed out in the the­ater after study­ing at the Nepean Dra­ma School. He made his first for­ays into Aus­tralian films in the mid-90s, before gain­ing inter­na­tion­al noto­ri­ety from his role as Owen Lars in Star Wars: Episodes II and III. He quick­ly estab­lished him­self as an actor capa­ble of nav­i­gat­ing dif­fer­ent reg­is­ters while embrac­ing chal­leng­ing roles. He played char­ac­ters under pres­sure in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thir­ty (2012) and Scott Cooper’s Black Mass (2015); a teacher tak­ing part in a mar­tial arts tour­na­ment in Gavin O’Connor’s War­rior (2011); an arro­gant wealthy heir in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gats­by (2013); and a man mar­ried to a Black woman in the seg­re­ga­tion­ist South in 1950s-60s Amer­i­ca in Jeff Nichols’ Lov­ing (2016), a role which earned him a Gold­en Globe nom­i­na­tion for Best Actor. 

Along­side his act­ing career, Joel Edger­ton moved into the director’s chair in 2015 with the thriller The Gift, in which he also played the lead role. Three years lat­er, Boy Erased, his sec­ond direc­to­r­i­al out­ing, led by Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kid­man and Rus­sell Crowe, con­firmed his mas­tery of sto­ry­telling and direc­tion. Hav­ing writ­ten all the films he’s direct­ed, Joel Edger­ton also col­lab­o­rat­ed in writ­ing the screen­plays for The Rover (2013) and The King (2019), both direct­ed by David Michôd.