Douglas Booth

Douglas John Booth (born 9 July 1992) is an English actor and musician. He first came to public attention through his performance as Boy George in the BBC Two film Worried About the Boy. He went on to star in the BBC adaptations of Great Expectations and Christopher and His Kind (both 2011), Carlo Carlei's film adaptation of Romeo & Juliet (2013), and the Netflix biopic The Dirt (2019).

Booth also appeared in Darren Aronofsky's Noah and Lone Scherfig's The Riot Club (both 2014) and co-starred in The Wachowskis' Jupiter Ascending (2015).

Early life and education Douglas John Booth was born in Greenwich, London, to Vivien (née De Cala), a painter, and Simon Booth, a shipping finance consultant and former managing director of both CitiGroup and Deutsche Bank's shipping finance divisions. Booth's father is English, and his mother is of Spanish and Dutch ancestry. His older sister, Abigail, is a Chelsea School of Art graduate. Booth spent his early childhood in Greenwich and moved to Sevenoaks, Kent at the age of ten. He struggled at school, "having to put in double or triple the amount of effort as everyone else" but said the condition made him "more resilient in every sense". He played the trumpet as a child. Booth took his first major roles in musicals presented by the Sackville Children's Choir at the Stag Theatre in Sevenoaks. He played Leader of the Rats in Rats! The Musical, and Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew. He further developed his interest in drama at the age of twelve, after starring in a school production of Agamemnon: "I found myself feeling really engaged for the first time ... I thought, 'I rather like being the centre of attention. This is where I want to be.'" By the age of thirteen, he was involved with the National Youth Theatre and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Booth received both private and state education; he attended Solefield School, a boys' junior independent school in Sevenoaks, followed by Bennett Memorial Diocesan School, a Church of England state Voluntary Aided school in the town of Royal Tunbridge Wells (Kent), and Lingfield Notre Dame School, an independent school in the village of Lingfield in Surrey.

Booth joined the Curtis Brown acting agency at the age of fifteen. He then had a minor role as Prince Eustace in the Channel 4 miniseries The Pillars of the Earth (2010), a medieval saga filmed in Budapest with Ian McShane and Donald Sutherland.

Breakthrough Booth rose to prominence in 2010 following his performance as the pop star Boy George in the BBC Two drama Worried About the Boy. He underwent a physical transformation for the role, shaving off his eyebrows and wearing heavy makeup. Booth met Boy George during filming, with the singer remarking: "He just gets it. There's something about him that reminds me of me when I was 17." Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Ceri Radford said Booth delivered a "mesmerising" performance: "He offered a convincing portrayal of O'Dowd as a beautiful young man who oozed ambiguous sex appeal and protected his feelings with a carapace of prickly wit."

Booth next played the role of Pip in the BBC One adaptation of Dickens' Great Expectations (2011), alongside Gillian Anderson and Ray Winstone. Broadcast over the Christmas period, the miniseries was a huge ratings success. Anne Billson of The Telegraph felt it was a misstep to cast someone "so distractingly lovely" in the role of Pip: "It's not that Douglas Booth was bad, it's just that one can't imagine Dickens ever intended Pip to be more beautiful than Estella, who, after all, has been brought up to break men's hearts." Mike Hale of The New York Times dismissed Booth as "a CW-style actor whose exceptionally pretty face doesn't convey much beyond puzzlement and petulance." Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times, however, found the actor's performance "haunting" while Emma Jones of The Huffington Post dismissed the "debate over the extreme prettiness of Douglas Booth", arguing that "Booth's beauty is only a backdrop to Pip's naivety."

Also in 2011, Booth appeared in the BBC film Christopher and His Kind, which explored novelist Christopher Isherwood's formative years in 1930s Berlin. He played Heinz, a German street-sweeper who became the lover of Matt Smith's Isherwood.

In 2012, Booth starred opposite Miley Cyrus and Demi Moore in the teen drama LOL. He witnessed the paparazzi interest surrounding co-star Cyrus during filming: "It was bizarre and, interestingly, not at all glamorous." Filmed in 2010, when Booth was seventeen, the movie received a very limited theatrical release and unfavourable reviews. Later that year, Booth read selected extracts from David Copperfield as part of Sky Arts's In Love With Dickens documentary; other contributors included Simon Callow and Miriam Margolyes.

In 2013, Booth starred opposite Hailee Steinfeld in Carlo Carlei's film adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times praised Booth's memorable performance: "It's not so much that he makes a great Romeo; frankly DiCaprio's was better in Luhrmann's version, as was Leonard Whiting in Zeffirelli's … But it has been a while since a camera has so loved a face ... If anything, the movies in general are too intent on reducing Booth to that singular feature, when he is actually a fine actor." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle bemoaned the poor casting of Steinfeld: "And this is especially a shame because Douglas Booth as Romeo is quite good and could have been better, if only he had someone to play off of." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter remarked that Booth "seems to have a grasp of what he's saying and behaves in credibly laddish fashion ... but Booth's vocal range is very narrow, and he speaks in a monotone." Claudia Puig of USA Today found Booth "more skilled" than Steinfeld "in the passionate intonation department" while The Independent'''s Geoffrey MacNab asserted that Booth "shows a certain star quality."

2014–present

In March 2014, he appeared as Shem in Darren Aronofsky's biblical epic Noah. Emma Watson played his character's wife; she first met Booth while shooting a Burberry fashion campaign in 2009: "There's something old-mannish about Doug, which he had even then. He knows who he is. He doesn't get intimidated, doesn't hold back, and is generally fearless."

In September 2014, Booth starred alongside Sam Claflin, Max Irons and Freddie Fox in the black comedy The Riot Club, directed by Lone Scherfig. Booth made "friends for life" during the film shoot, and has said of the characters: "When you meet these sort of guys, they're always so charming. It's almost more discomfiting for the audience to be charmed by them, to like them a lot, and to see how far they'll go with them." He played Mr. Bingley in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith.

In November 2017, Booth starred in the international film Loving Vincent, as Armand Roulin, one of the models for Vincent van Gogh's Roulin Family portraits. Booth played Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx in the 2019 film The Dirt.

Booth played the writer boyfriend, Don, opposite Margaret Qualley in the 2020 film My Salinger Year.

Personal life On 3 July 2021, Douglas announced on his Instagram account that he had proposed to his girlfriend Bel Powley on Primrose Hill, having met in 2016 on the set of Mary Shelley''. The wedding took place on 28 October 2023 at Petersham Nurseries in Richmond, followed by an afterparty at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The couple were married under a chuppah made by Booth's sister, an artist, to honour Powley's Jewish heritage.

Philanthropy Booth has been supporting UNHCR since 2015. Booth has supported various UNHCR fundraising events and campaigns.

Filmography +Key Denotes projects that have not yet been released Film Year Title Role Notes 2009 From Time to Time Sefton Oldknow 2010 Worried About the Boy Boy George Television film 2011 Christopher and His Kind Heinz Neddermeyer Television film 2012 LOL Kyle Ross 2013 Romeo & Juliet Romeo Montague 2014 Noah Shem The Riot Club Harry Villiers 2015 Jupiter Ascending Titus Abrasax 2016 Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Mr. Bingley The Limehouse Golem Dan Leno 2017 Loving Vincent Armand Roulin Mary Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley 2019 The Dirt Nikki Sixx 2020 My Salinger Year Don 2023 Unwelcome Jamie Shoshana Thomas Wilkin 2024 Young Werther Werther Post-production

Television Year Title Role Notes 2010 The Pillars of the Earth Prince Eustace Miniseries; 8 episodes 2011 Great Expectations Pip Miniseries; 3 episodes 2012 In Love With... Ham Peggotty Episode: "In Love with Dickens" 2015 And Then There Were None Anthony James Marston Miniseries; 1 episode 2022 That Dirty Black Bag Red Bill Miniseries; 8 episodes 2025 The Sandman Cluracan Recurring role; 7 episodes DI Tom Radley Post-production

Audiobooks Year Title Role2017 Northanger Abbey John Thorpe Scarlet City Part I, II, III Jonah