Louis Partridge and I have been chatting for roughly 30 minutes when our conversation is derailed by a bout of juvenile giggling. You see, the 20-year-old actor – currently sitting on the cusp of mega-stardom, to say nothing of the front row at Prada – is giving me a whistle-stop tour of his iPhone’s camera roll. “My dodgy hypebeast phase,” he says, wincing good-naturedly as he rolls through a series of snapshots of his 14-year-old self absolutely living for Yeezy trainers (“I used to queue for them”) and Stone Island everything (“get the badge in”).
Much like Partridge, this moment is nothing if not endearing, possessing many of the hallmarks of a certain sort of British boy who came of age in the 2010s. While he might be wearing a simple white tee and jeans today, it’s clear that the Wandsworth-born internet sensation has always been “very into fashion”, though the fact he is now an ambassador for the aforementioned Prada never fails to surprise him. “I can’t believe they keep hiring me,” Partridge marvels when we meet for a cappuccino in Dalston, east London, not long after his return from Milan men’s fashion week this past January. “I’ve got an old photo [of me] wearing a Raf Simons jumper from about 2015, so to be able to meet him every time I go to a show is amazing. Not that I’ve told him that…” he says, trailing off.
Simons, the Italian fashion house’s co-creative director, is just one of the big names in fashion and film the actor now considers a friend. There’s Bryan Cranston, who gave him some sage advice on how to deal with his exploding fame (“just be grateful that you’re here and you’re working”); two-time co-star Millie Bobby Brown who “always made me feel calm and comfortable on set”, and whose wedding he will be attending later this year; as well as the new raft of young British screen talents he runs in something of a pack with, be they Kit Connor or Iris Law – not forgetting, of course, the American pop star and unofficial Gen Z queen Olivia Rodrigo, with whom he is rumoured to be in a relationship.
Partridge, with his Disney prince good looks (unruly chestnut hair tucked behind an ear, envy-inducing cheekbones, sleepy, wide-apart eyes), is at a peculiar juncture in his career where he is now greeted at film premieres by screaming fans, and has his movements followed by the long lenses of the paparazzi, but is still living with his parents and two sisters at the family home in Clapham. When he was younger, he says, he was “a bit of an annoying brat”, but now promises he’s “a good, solid brother”.
Acting since childhood, it was booking the role of the charming Tewkesbury in Netflix’s Enola Holmes film series, when he was 16, that hurtled him into the limelight. An unapologetically 2020s imagining of what adventures Sherlock Holmes’s younger sister might have had in Victorian England, Partridge played the love interest to Bobby Brown’s Enola, seemingly hypnotising a whole generation in his wake. After the first film’s release in 2020, he went from having 200,000 followers on Instagram to four million 13 days later – today, that figure stands at 9.2 million and counting. Then, in 2022, Partridge starred in Danny Boyle’s gritty Sex Pistols biopic, Pistol, as British punk icon Sid Vicious. “When you can forget yourself in a role, it’s one of the most fulfilling things,” he says today of the project, which he marks as a career highlight (despite having to finish his A-levels while filming it).
His next project, the Alfonso Cuarón-directed Apple TV+ crime thriller series Disclaimer, will put Partridge firmly in the company of Hollywood’s finest, when he will appear opposite industry heavyweights including Cate Blanchett, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kevin Kline. He plays Jonathan Brigstocke, with Lesley Manville starring as his mother, whom he cites as one of his acting inspirations (“I just think she’s absolutely extraordinary”). Due to be released this year, the project is tightly under wraps – no sneak peaks permitted. When I tell him this, he exhales a sigh of relief. “It saves the fake compliments,” Partridge says, his self-consciousness palpable. “I’m not good at watching myself back.”
It can’t be easy, then, to see himself all over the tabloids and TikTok with Rodrigo. He breaks into a wry smile when her name is brought up. “Dating probably shouldn’t be done in the public eye,” he says, diplomatically. “There’s enough going on between two people. You don’t need the voices of thousands of others in your head. I think she’s got it a lot worse than I have. I can be a bit of a normal person. She’s got tons and tons of eyes on her case.” Take one look at Partridge’s Instagram comment section and you’ll see “the voices” first-hand: her fans declaring their acceptance of him, his fans asking for his hand in marriage instead. Everybody has an opinion, how does he block out the noise? “If there’s a load of people nattering in a room about you, you can choose to put your ear to the door to hear what they say or not. I think you’re probably better off not letting curiosity get the better of you.”
The middle child to a lawyer turned graduate recruiter father and an accountant mother – who left her job to bring up Louis and his sisters, and now volunteers with a charity called Helping Rhinos – growing up he was constantly looking for stimulation. He’d usually be injured from skateboarding, parkour or rugby (he has broken his feet five times skating, with the scars to prove it) or throwing himself into mastering a new instrument (“I feel like a fraud when it comes to piano because I just learnt it all from YouTube”).
Inspired by films including Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners and TV shows such as The Office (he makes it clear that the British original is superior), he pushed to explore the world of acting from 11, starting with a tiny part in Emil and the Detectives at the National Theatre in 2013. Although he didn’t have any lines, “it really was quite a big deal.” From there, he cut his teeth as an extra on sets including Paddington 2 and Call The Midwife, and a short film, Second Skin, directed by Charlie Manton, a fellow young creative: “It was the weirdest thing. [When we finished] I actually felt homesick from set. I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.”
In the meantime, Partridge is preparing for auditions, hanging out with his friends and spending quality time with his family. “I don’t think my older sister really cares [about the fame],” he muses. “My younger sister gets asked a lot of questions about me in school though. I think she gets a few street cred points.” He takes it all in his stride, perhaps because, above all, he’s grateful to be working. “Twenty is a pretty golden age,” he says, grinning. “I think it’s a great thing to be young. And a great thing to have a body that works. I’m grateful for where I am in life and everything that’s ahead, for better or for worse.”
Hair: Alfie Sackett. Make-up: Claire Urquhart. Nails: Trish Lomax. Set design: Tobias Blackmore. Production: The Curated. Digital artwork: Hoxton Post
Main look: Appliquéd jacket, Craig Green.
