Starting now and heading through the end of the year, you are going to hear Jeremy Irvine’s name. A lot. The young actor with one television series to his credit (Life Bites) landed the lead role in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar bait, War Horse, where he’ll play a heroic teen who enters the battlefields of World War I to retrieve his pet horse, which has been “recruited” to serve. His involvement in a Spielberg production brings recognition, obviously, which is why Irvine’s career is starting to heat up.
Irvine’s latest casting coup is landing the role of young Colin Firth in Jonathan Teplitzky’s The Railway Man, according to The Hollywood Reporter. As we reported earlier, Railway recounts the time WWII prisoner of war Eric Lomax spent working on the Japanese Death Railway that connects Bangkok to what is now known as Yangon, Myanmar. As the story evolves, the freed Lomax will track down and confront his captors. Irvine, obviously, will play Lomax in flashbacks.
That’s not the only prestige picture on Irvine’s rapidly developing resume. He currently hard at work on Mike Newell’s adaptation of Great Expectations alongside Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter. (He plays Pip, of course.) And he already wrapped filming on Now Is Good, Ol Parker’s drama about a dying girl who wishes to lose her virginity that co-stars Dakota Fanning and Paddy Considine.
Needless to say, Irvine’s star is on the rise. And it’s likely wise that Railway locked him up before War Horse drops, because if it’s as good as many expect it to be, this young actor could be in demand for years to come.
