Connor Swindells was being “particularly British” when he tried to play it cool with a bit of self-deprecating humor, after receiving the Trophée Chopard at the Cannes Film Festival.
The honor, awarded annually to emerging actors with a strong track record of picking Oscar-winners-to-be. But Swindells admitted the weight of the recognition only fully hit him once the whirlwind of the previous evening began.
“I didn’t quite realize how special it was until it was all kicking off,” he said. “Then I was suddenly very, very anxious.”
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Over the past several years, the actor has built a body of work that moves between sharp comedy and darker dramatic material. Despite the growing scale of the projects around him, he still speaks about acting less as a performance showcase and more as a collaborative instinct.
“I’m most attracted to the team behind the project — the actors, the people making it,” he said of choosing roles. “And if it’s shooting somewhere hot and sexy, then that’s even better.”
His down-to-earth groundedness may come from the fact that acting was never originally part of a career plan. Growing up, Swindells focused on sports and imaged that would be his future. Acting was “something I always had an affinity to” — but it took longer for him see it as a path.
Everything shifted after an injury at age 17 forced him to reconsider what came next.
“Suddenly I thought, well, maybe this isn’t going to be what I want to do forever,” he said. He began auditioning for local theater productions, a decision that altered the direction of his life.
“From there I got lucky,” he said. “Really, it was a moment of downtime that took me into doing something that I love.”
That sense of accidental momentum still seems to shape the way he approaches his career.
The next major example of that arrives with his upcoming project “The Entertainment System Is Down,” from Ruben Östlund, the two-time Palme d’Or winner behind “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Square.”
“He’s a genius,” he said of working with Östlund. “He made me a better actor.”
“The Entertainment System Is Down,” which also stars Kirsten Dunst, Keanu Reeves, Daniel Brühl, Tobias Menzies and Nicholas Braun, remains largely under wraps, though Swindells describes the production as intense, collaborative and transformative.
“Once you were on set, you were on set for the whole day,” he says. “Super long takes, high volume of takes. It was hard work.”
What fascinated him most, however, was Östlund’s insistence on total presence. Swindells compares the director’s method less to traditional filmmaking than to athletic coaching — perhaps unsurprising given both men’s sporting backgrounds.
“He creates this wonderful collaborative environment,” Swindells said. “It really feels like a team effort.”
Then there was the gong.
Östlund replaced the standard call of “action” with a ritual involving an actual gong wheeled onto set. The sound would ring out fully before actors began the scene.
“The first few times it happened, I couldn’t help but giggle,” Swindells admitted. “But I quickly got into it. I sort of longed for the gong in the end.”
The gong became a mechanism for focus a collective attention — forcing everyone on set to truly listen. It’s the kind of anecdote actors often tell when describing directors who fundamentally alter the way they work, and Swindells said it became genuine adoration of the moment.
Offscreen, his approach is considerably less intense. Swindells wore Prada for the ceremony, but does he consider himself a fashion person?
“My wife is quite into fashion,” he said of his actress wife, Amber Anderson. “So I can’t really ignore it.” Anderson, also a former model, has sharpened his awareness of clothing as another form of expression. “I do find it really fun to try stuff on and experiment,” he said. “It’s another version of expression.”
Left entirely to his own devices Swindells insisted he still defaults toward jeans, T-shirts and sporty basics. His wife occasionally stages an intervention when necessary. “She’s like, ‘You cannot go out in this outfit. We have to fix it.’”
For now, Swindells is planning to spend the summer traveling before beginning another project later this year that is still kept under wraps, and there’s a good chance that Östlund’s film will be an entry at next year’s festival.
His goal for what’s next has changed after his Cannes experience of bonding with co-honoree Odessa A’Zion.
“Well, now that I’ve hung out with Odessa for 24 hours, I’d love to work with her, so that would be my answer,” he said.