Life: Who Plays ‘Britain’s Schindler’ With Anthony Hopkins In This Biopic?

With his first feature film, James Hawes highlights a lesser-known hero and brings Nicholas Winton’s story to the screen for the first time. In 1939, this London broker arranged for Czechoslovakian children to be flown to London, most of them Jewish, to be taken to concentration camps.

The rescue is all the more powerful because Winton hasn’t said anything about it for nearly fifty years. Finally, in 1988, during a BBC broadcast, his heroism was revealed and praised.

The man nicknamed “Britain’s Schindler” is joined on screen by two actors: Anthony Hopkins, who needs no introduction, and Johnny Flynn, who plays a younger version of Winton in the 1930s.

A few lines about his behavior

Johnny Flynn was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, the son of British actor and singer Eric Flynn. Passionate about music, he won a scholarship to study music at the Pilgrim School in Winchester. There he learned to play the violin and trumpet. Later, he taught himself the guitar and received a second music scholarship, this time at Bedales School, a public institution located in the village of Step. He eventually received acting training at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts.

It was in 2005 that he made his debut on the screen (under the pseudonym Joe Flynn) with a small role in the English detective series Ash & Scribbs. The following year, he starred in the fantasy adventure film The Great Crusade, where he is a young man who is transported to the year 1212 thanks to a time machine.

He then devoted himself to music by touring with his folk rock band, Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit, for which he sang and wrote the first two albums, in Larum (2008) and was listening (2010). The latter has a duet with Laura Marling, WaterUsed by Mia Hansen-Love in her film Young Love.

Declaration of love

In 2011, he returned to comedy, this time under his real name, in the drama Lotus Eaters, followed by the musical romance Song One (2014) with Anne Hathaway. In the same year, he was directed by Olivier Assayas in the film Sils Maria and became known to the general public with the Netflix series Lovesick. For three seasons, he plays a young man who is forced to see all his ex-girlfriends to tell them he has chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease.

Along with Lovesick, he is not idle and appears in several English series (Detectorists, Brotherhood, The Nightmare Worlds of HG Wells, Inside No. 9), as well as in the psychological thriller Jersey Affair (2017), where he is a mysterious man suspected of murder, but whose charm Jesse forces Buckley to submit.

In David Bowie’s shoes

Along with his band, he continues to divide his musical career between big and small screens. He stars in adaptations of literary classics (miniseries Les Misérables and The Vanity Fair, and Emma. (2020), based on Jane Austen) and portrays several historical figures. He alternated between playing Albert Einstein in the TV series Genius, the David Bowie biopic Stardust, and Ian Fleming in the spy film The Ruse.

An unknown hero

With his role as Nicholas Winton in One Lifetime, he adds a new name to that list: “It’s rare to read a script whose themes are still so relevant. It deals with issues that every generation has to face. We’re increasingly forgetting the humanistic values ​​that Nikki embodied.”

The team first filmed Anthony Hopkins’ scenes so that Flynn could master his gestures, gait and rhythm. So he visited the set when Hopkins was filming in the UK.

For an actor, life “It’s not a war film, it’s a story about people who existed, a deeply human story. It’s not about soldiers, it’s about the people affected by the conflict and their faces, heroic actions and sacrifices, big or small. The film is about , how people help each other despite these tragic circumstances.”

Johnny Flynn can be found on Netflix on April 4 in the Ripley series, based on the novels by Patricia Highsmith, already adapted for the film Full Sun and The Talented Mr. Ripley.