The Age of Joseph Quinn

Photography DANNY KASIRYE

Styled by MAC HUELSTER

Actor Joseph Quinn’s pupils are large and dark brown enough that they can sometimes appear dilated. Fans have dubbed him Chocolate Button Eyes. And yet, when I ask him whether he agrees that his eyes are his most distinctive feature, Quinn resists the question (as he does with even my most painless queries). “I would never refer to any of my features as distinctive, but yes,” he allows. “I guess it was pretty clear from a young age that I wasn’t going to be able to lie very well in this life. My eyes are a bit of a giveaway. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. It’s weird to talk about one’s appearance. So yes. Ba-ha!”

The 30-year-old actor is Zooming from the back of a car on a Thursday evening, an illuminated band on the seat behind him changing colors like a mood ring. He has just ended a day on the set of a forthcoming Fantastic Four film in which he’ll play Johnny Storm, a.k.a. The Human Torch, but he seems energized. He is clearly intelligent, deploying words that I later Google and immediately absorb into my vocabulary (declamatory), but whenever he says something that verges on sounding hoity-toity, he undercuts it with something self-deprecating.

He is on his way into London to see Longlegs, starring Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe. Has he noticed that more people recognize him now when he’s out in London? “It’s so loathsome to fucking talk about,” he says. Then, again, he softens to the question: “But yeah, when a project that you’re doing is out there, then I think you’re just—sadly, these days—on more people’s telephones, so they’re more aware of you. Then the next thing comes out, and then it’s fine again. It goes up and down.”

There doesn’t seem to be any “down” for Quinn in 2024. In 2023, he appeared in one small indie film, Hoard, but this year he seems to be everywhere. “Sorry,” he says. In June, he co-starred opposite Lupita Nyong’o in A Quiet Place: Day One, a prequel to the hit franchise kicked off by John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. Next up, he’ll play one of two emperors in Gladiator II, out in November, followed by roles in The Fantastic Four [in theaters July 25, 2025] and Warfare, a film from Alex Garland. The TL;DR? Those who don’t already recognize Quinn (and his debatably distinctive eyes) after his breakout role in 2022 as Eddie Munson on Stranger Things in 2022, certainly will by 2025.

Quinn seems primed to follow the trajectories of other actors he admires: Cate Blanchett, Olivia Colman, Willem Dafoe, Nyong’o, Jesse Plemons. “I’m not chasing any particular echelon of stardom,” he says, with the humble caveat that he doesn’t think that’s necessarily in the cards, anyway. “It’s very much about the opportunities that interest me, and I suppose I’m getting used to the fact that I have a little more choice now, which is such a luxury. That choice will come and go and vary, and [I must] surrender to the idea that there is very little under my control here. But with some discipline and some discernment, I can maybe tailor and foster the opportunities to my taste a little more now, which is very exciting.”

It can be difficult to detect a through line between a film like Hoard, which Quinn describes as “really feral”—his character, Michael, and a teenage foster child (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) activate a savagery in each other; in one jarring scene, he presses an iron onto her stomach—and A Quiet Place: Day One. Quinn says he was drawn to Hoard because he was excited by the talent involved, namely director Luna Carmoon, and because it would be shot in South London, where he grew up. Carmoon is also a South Londoner. With A Quiet Place: Day One, too, he was excited (and initially daunted) to work with Nyong'o and with writer and director Michael Sarnoski. But that role, too, is laced with ferality. Quinn’s character is Eric, a British man stranded in New York City at the genesis of an invasion of monsters that locate their prey, us, by sound. We meet Eric when he bursts from a flooded subway stairwell with such intensity that some audience members in my screening jumped. For much of the film, Eric wordlessly conveys horror. But, as with his performance in Hoard, Quinn’s turn as Eric is complicated by moments of tenderness and vulnerability.

"We always romanticize the antithesis of what we're experiencing."

Quinn is ultra-careful about sharing any information about Gladiator II for which Paramount might punish him. Quinn plays a blond (the wig is fun, but effective) emperor named Geta who is prone to sadism and heavy eyeliner. (“We finished all the eyeliner on Malta. It’s gone,” Quinn jokes.) When his character delivers the thumbs-down that Joaquin Phoenix made iconic as emperor Commodus in the first Gladiator (a performance that earned Phoenix an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor), he does so with a gleam in his eyes.

Quinn knew Gladiator II—a continuation of a film that had a profound effect on viewers the world over, on film, and on culture—would be a risk. “I watched it when I was about 12 or 13, and was spellbound by it,” he says. “That kind of filmmaking doesn't happen all the time. Ridley Scott is very good at it, and I was aware of the fact that coming close to that world again was something that wouldn't sit well with some people. I agree that it is a masterpiece, and it's sometimes better to leave these things alone.” However, Quinn would never have turned down his role in the film, nor any role that placed him proximate to Denzel Washington. “It was literally undeniable; I would not have been able to deny that opportunity,” he says. He was reassured by the script and guided by the stars, an unrivaled constellation of castmates which, besides Washington, include Pedro Pascal (“wonderful and kind”), Paul Mescal (“very Irish,” “unapologetically Paul”), and Connie Nielsen, reprising her role of Lucilla from the original film.

"I watched [Gladiator] when I was about 12 or 13, and was spellbound by it. That kind of filmmaking doesn't happen all the time."

Quinn is looking ahead to a parade of enviable roles, and I ask whether there have been times when it has felt like too much. The short answer is no; the long answer is absolutely not. He has wanted to act professionally since he was a teenager. He applied to drama school and got into the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He had never spent much time around actors, but suddenly he was surrounded by like-minded people. “It was two and a half years of experimenting and failing and partying,” he recalls. “It changed stuff; it was really valuable to me. It’s not for everyone, but I was there at an age when I was naive enough to lap it up. I really enjoyed it; I met some brilliant nutters there.”

He graduated from LAMDA in 2015, at age 21, and between then and his breakout role in Stranger Things, Quinn wavered between feast and famine: times when he had secured promising projects, such as a small role as a Winterfell guard in the seventh season of Game of Thrones; and times when he was trying to make his paychecks from those projects go as far as possible. Even once he was cast in Stranger Things in his mid-20s, his career didn’t immediately ignite. Because of the pandemic, it was close to three years between his audition and the show coming out. “You're either working and it's all ticking along very nicely, or it's a hustle, you've got no money, and you can't do anything. Yo-yo-ing between those extremes is pretty disconcerting,” he says. “I didn’t really have any other option. It was the only thing I had any natural aptitude for. It felt like the only way.”

This current prolonged feast is certainly the busiest he’s been in his career. He’s very grateful for it, and not eager for a break. “I know what it's like to not be busy. And there's virtue in both. We always romanticize the antithesis of what we're experiencing. I think when we're busy, we want rest, and when we rest, we get restless. It’s certainly a test, and one that I’m really enjoying.”

While his career excites him, there are less savory facets of being an actor—specifically all the offscreen attention one receives—Quinn is less thrilled about. He notes that the U.K. is tamer in its affections than the United States, or, at least, it feels less unsettling to be recognized in the place where he’s from than in a foreign country. But eyes are beginning to turn to him. “It would be naive to suggest that that isn’t a little bit a part of it, which is strange,” he says. Starring in two major studio films in 2024 means that your personal life will, inevitably, be mined for content. “It’s about doing my job. That's what I feel so grateful for, to be able to keep doing my job and working with people that inspire me and challenge me. Everything else is just distraction and glitter.”

 "...to be able to keep doing my job and working with people that inspire me and challenge me. Everything else is just distraction and glitter."

A lot of blooming actors claim a lack of interest in fame and attention, but Quinn seems to mean it. Throughout our interview, he is completely, even frustratingly, diplomatic. He is quick to answer questions by praising his colleagues, and quicker to deflect anything that might seem like praise for his own performances. He is like a level tool: every time he drifts towards a statement that might be perceived by someone, somewhere, as provocative or salacious, he floats back to the middle.

He calls his personal life “remarkably boring.” He unwinds via mundane domestic tasks such as doing laundry and cooking, and enjoys exercising and cold plunges. “I'm in that very irritating stage where I know a little bit about it, which is a dangerous thing, so I'm becoming slightly evangelical about it, and telling everyone to do it, which is quite annoying I imagine.” He rattles off the benefits: the flushing of cortisol, the raising of serotonin, the healthful benefits of doing something you don’t really want to do every day. “Again, I’m no expert, but I have gotten up to a respectable amount of time in there. For myself, anyway.” He adds that he typically spends about eight minutes in his tank, which is the closest he will come to a brag.

And he loves to garden, though his grounds have lately been invaded. “I’ve got a hoya plant that is being ravaged by snails,” he says. “They are trying to disturb my peace of mind, but I will prevail. Over snail.” Quinn may consider his personal life boring, but it is not without its dramas.

GROOMING: Thomas Dunkin
CREATIVE CONSULTANT: Mariana Suplicy
DIGITAL TECH: Matthew Cylinder
PHOTO ASSISTANT: Isaac Rosenthal
STYLING ASSISTANT: John Dunham