Transcript note: This transcript is based on the original working script. It may contain production notes, draft wording, spelling mistakes or other material that differs from the finished video - these scripts were meant to be spoken, not read.

Long before Snatch and LONG before Hollywood knew his name - Stephen Graham was doing what most working class actors have to do - Graft.

But - Stephen Graham is something a bit - Well - Special.

Normally when we’re talking about Scene Stealers - That means talking about someone with presence, charisma and a certain kind of energy that sort of bends the frame around them.

Except - Stephen Graham doesn’t bend the frame.

He grabs hold of it, tight.

And that’s a little bit more dangerous.

Let’s take a look at what makes Stephen Graham a Scene, Stealer.

[intro]

Stephen Graham was born in Kirkby, Merseyside - Just down the road from me - Local lad, heh.

He trained at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool.

He wasn’t industry connected, fast tracked and wasn’t the “next big thing” so to speak.

His first TV roles would be in the Great British staples, Children's Ward, Coronation Street, The Bill and Heartbeat

You’d be surprised how much talent comes from these shows on the quiet.

But none of them ever scream future star, they just scream survival for the most part.

It’d not be fair to say he was typecast from the get go, but he naturally seemed to lean into a certain persona.

“Tough lad”, “local hardman” or just a general background menace - You know the ones, scallywag as my Mum used to say.

But - There was always something else going on - Something, deeper.

He wasn’t just playing “aggression”.

He had this ability to make you believe the history of the character just with his presence.

His body language, his tone - More importantly his eyes - There was always something going on behind them.

He took a role in Snatch - Which was a chaotic kind of movie, and he wasn’t the headliner.

Snatch was the second film from Guy Ritchie -

A young filmmaker at the time who’d seen success with his previous film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

It was only a small film, but he managed to snag some big name talents - Most notably Brad Pitt and Benicio del Toro so it was already punching above its weight.

Funny thing is - He wasn’t meant to be in it,

he went to the auditions with someone else and even denied being there for an audition when asked -

But - Guy Richie took note, told him he liked his face and asked if he could start work on Monday.

He’s paired up with an equally young and inexperienced Jason Statham - They’re a double act of likely lads, Turkish and Tommy - Always on the look out for the next deal in the back streets.

Despite it being chaotic, Stephen Graham does something quietly impressive.

As Tommy, he isn’t flashy, he’s not the most quotable and he’s not even the most dangerous.

But, he is - Real.

You don’t doubt that he’s been in that world for years with the likes of Turkish, avoiding the Brick Tops of the world

Just ducking and diving through it hoping to avoid too much attention from anyone.

He’s not stealing any scenes in that movie, he’s making them believable - Just by being there.

The gears are turning every time he makes an exchange, even when he’s on screen with Brad Pitt doing his impressive Gypsy thing -

You’re watching him and believing.

For a lot of people, including me, this is the first time you really notice him - Which when you think about the sheer amount of talent in that pokey little British film, is impressive enough.

After Snatch is released he toddles off stateside and does a bit of work there, but it’s not any less impressive when he does.

Other hotbeds of talent like Band of Brothers starring alongside the likes of, well - Everyone.

He pops up in Scorsese's Gangs of New York alongside heavy weights like Leonardo Di Caprio and Daniel Day Lewis.

I mean, he’s not doing badly for a lad from Liverpool.

Next comes This is England - Another small British film, and if you’ve not seen this one, I heavily recommend you do.

It’s another film packed with a ridiculous amount of talent, a lot of it early - BUT - It’s one of the things that made it work as well as it did.

Stephen Graham brings us Combo - And in doing so, he stops being just a “good supporting actor” and becomes something else entirely.

Now - Combo is a monster.

Let's not sugarcoat it.

He's a radicalised, deeply prejudiced, and violently unpredictable villain.

But, he’s far from a simple one.

He’s damaged. Angry. Grieving.

He’s a man who has been socially and politically manipulated to the point where he’s a loaded gun.

And, Stephen Graham doesn’t overplay it - If anything, the opposite.

He plays a man containing all the pain and rejection he’s accumulated over the years until he explodes.

And it’s absolutely terrifying when he does.

You know it’s been building for years. You spend most of the film holding your breath, waiting for it to happen - But the trick he pulls off here is - It’s still shocking to watch.

This is England would return later for TV sequels following the lives of the characters over the years.

Stephen Graham would return each time, and the character work done across these series is unbelievably complex.

Over the course of the sequels, he gives us a man fully prepared to take the consequences of his horrific actions.

A man absolutely gutted by regret for who he became, but trapped by his own history.

It’s a hard, brutal watch.

He commits unforgivable acts, and his path to any sort of "redemption" is incredibly messy, painful, and ultimately tragic.

But, importantly - No matter how vile he was in the beginning - Stephen Graham forces you to have empathy for him.

He literally makes your heart break for one of the most fundamentally ugly characters to grace the screen.

It’s not easy, that.

Through it all, he’s never just performing anger or sorrow - He’s containing it - Until, it.. Leaks.

It makes him magnetic on screen.

Combo would be his breakout role - It got him proper attention - He won the British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film, in 2006

After This is England 90 he’d walk away with Best Actor from the British Academy Television Award in 2016

He continues to duck and dive through other projects - And - I won’t try and sell you a tale of him never putting a foot wrong - He does - I mean - Does anyone like Code 404?

But, as I said - He’s a grafter - He’s always wanting to work.

Before all that though, he'd already begun making waves across the Atlantic...

His first big international test came along in Boardwalk Empire - He’s playing Al Capone in prestige American Television.

It could have gone badly wrong from him right there.

British Actor - Iconic American Gangster - There’s some expectations riding that one.

It didn’t.

He humanised the monster. Showed the insecurity, the need for approval - And - The hunger.

He’s not doing an impression or the caricature of what you expect to see.

He’s just - Being, human - A person - Someone you can relate to.

Once again - Not the lead - It’s an ensemble cast, but when he’s on screen - He’s listening, like really listening - It’s not him - It’s Al Capone.

But more importantly, he’s reacting as Al Capone - And that’s a surprisingly hard skill.

It’s a role that keeps him on screen for the full series run and puts a massive tick next to his name on the other side of the pond.

From there - He’s all over the place, really - Just one of those actors that pops up and makes you ask “Wait - Was that…?”

It’s slightly mad looking back at his career.

One minute he’s in a full-blown Hollywood machine - green screens, franchise money, catering trucks the size of Kirkby town centre.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

Both high profile Global releases. Massive press runs. Billion-dollar ecosystems.

Then you blink - and he’s back in something that feels, like it was shot in a week above a chippy.

No gloss. No safety net. Just performance.

The most impressive thing of all? - he doesn’t change.

He doesn’t suddenly “turn it on” because it’s a franchise.

Because he’s not adjusting to the size of the production - He doesn’t “save himself” for cinema - He doesn’t treat television like a step down.

He’s adjusting to the truth of the character - He plays both with the same intensity - like scale doesn’t matter

Fully committed. Fully inhabited. Fully locked in.

A lot of actors chase scale.

Stephen Graham chases material.

And that’s why it doesn’t matter if he’s standing on a deck with CGI pirates behind him or in a prison office under fluorescent lighting - you’re still watching him.

Tinker, Tailor Solider Spy with Gary Oldman and Benedict Cumberbatch

Taboo with Tom Hardy

Rocketman - The Elton John biopic

All to name but a few.

Fully believable.

Fully there.

More recently he’s really begun to show us what he’s made of

His television work of late has been - Well - A masterclass.

In Time - He’s playing Eric McNally, a decent, by-the-book prison officer who slowly gets compromised to protect his family.

He’s sharing the screen with Sean Bean, and he’s not playing a gangster or a local menace here; he’s playing suffocating, quiet desperation.

You watch an ordinary bloke be slowly crushed by an impossible situation, and Stephen Graham shows you every agonizing, slow crack in his conscience.

But then, he does something that completely redefines what a 'Scene Stealer' actually has to do.

He takes away the edits.

If you’ve seen the film Boiling Point, or his recent Netflix series Adolescence, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Both of these projects share a terrifying technical trick - they are filmed in real-time, in continuous, unbroken single shots.

In Boiling Point, he plays Andy, a head chef whose life and restaurant are collapsing around him on the busiest night of the year.

In Adolescence-a show he actually co-created and wrote-he plays Eddie, an ordinary working-class dad whose 13-year-old son is suddenly arrested for murder.

Each episode of that show is one relentless, unblinking hour-long take.

Think about what that means for an actor.

When you film in one continuous real-time shot, you don’t have an editor in a dark room cutting away to a reaction shot to save your performance.

You can't hide. You can't drop the ball.

The tension isn't being built by clever camera cuts - it has to be built, and sustained, entirely by the actors in the room.

In Boiling Point, you are practically sweating with him as he spirals.

In Adolescence, you are trapped in that house and that police station with a father whose entire world has just ended.

He carries the unbearable, raw emotional weight of those stories in real-time, never dropping character, never missing a beat.

It’s basically high-wire theatre caught on camera.

I mean - To be fair - It’s not just him, the whole crew do amazing work, but it is focused on him - Make no mistake who we’re all watching here.

And that brings us right back to the start.

Because whether he’s a ducking and diving scally in a Guy Ritchie crime caper

or, a tragically broken monster in This is England -

Or even A desperate dad in an unbroken one-hour take...

He isn’t just stealing the scene.

He isn't just bending the frame around himself.

He’s grabbing hold of it, tight.

And he absolutely refuses to let go.