Jack O’Connell is many things: cult British actor and heartthrob, Bafta award-winner, Derby County football club fanatic, and now, he can add another string to his bow: COS SS24 campaign star.
Since his 2007 breakout in Skins as Jack-the-lad nuisance Cook (O’Connell has that exact phrase tattooed on his arm), he’s landed roles in Andrew Haigh’s ice-cold drama series The North Water alongside Colin Farrell and Stephen Graham; starred opposite Emma Corrin in a red-hot adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover; made an appearance in Ferrari alongside Adam Driver and, most recently, played Amy Winehouse’s ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil in Back to Black, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic of the late jazz superstar. A head-spinning selection, to say the least.
“To properly inhabit someone, it has to be all-encompassing,” he told THE FACE back in 2021. “And to be honest, it’s quite an enjoyable part of the job, being able to bring all that to a role. If you’ve got to get fit, or lose weight, or learn to ride a horse, that’s my department. Personally, I feel [doing] anything less than that is a shortcoming.”
It’s only fitting, then, that O’Connell would now try his hand at some modelling, this time alongside Rina Sawayama in a slick COS campaign shot by Karim Sadli, right off the back of the brand’s first-ever runway show, which took place in Rome a couple of months ago. “I don’t do many campaigns, this will always be a lil bit special to me,” he says. To many more, we hope.