Yahoo Movies Josh O'Connor ended up in hospital because of one of his first films
The star of Challengers and The Crown pushed himself to the limit for 2017 British drama God's Own Country.
Josh O'Connor has become one of Britain's most impressive acting exports in the last few years. He's currently playing sexually-charged tennis alongside Zendaya in Challengers and he, of course, portrayed our current king in The Crown.
But before that, he played a very lonely sheep farmer in rural Yorkshire in the 2017 drama God's Own Country. In order to embody the character, O'Connor pushed himself so far that he ended up in hospital.
In an interview with The Guardian, O'Connor explained that he went to work on a sheep farm as part of his preparation, losing the best part of two stone in weight and ending up on a drip in hospital.
O'Connor acknowledged that he "got very sick" while making the film, which follows O'Connor's character as he falls in love with a migrant worker on the farm, but said the story remains "close to my heart".
"That was the closest to [method acting], to a method that I did,” he said. “But it took a lot out of me. And it took me a few years to realise the impact that had had on my mental health and how I was working. And to realise I wouldn’t be able to maintain that level of in-depth living and working long-term – it just wouldn’t work."
O'Connor said he "shut down" for the time he was making the film, which is "not sustainable" now that he's working for longer and on bigger projects.
God's Own Country won critical acclaim for its raw storytelling and committed performances. According to aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of critics gave it a positive review. It won four gongs at the British Independent Film Awards, including an acting award for O'Connor.
Watch: Trailer for God's Own Country
As for why actors — like his own younger self — are attracted to this difficult way of working, the 33-year-old explained that "actors like to feel like they're working" and so often gravitate to the most obvious manifestation of that.
He said: "The idea of suffering for your art is very attractive. And it felt like that on God’s Own Country. It wasn’t nice being in hospital for a week, but I remember at the time thinking: ‘This is the stuff! This is how it goes!’ It’s just nice to feel like you’re working hard, that’s the truth.”
O'Connor's acting tastes have clearly changed since those early days and he's now able to deliver committed performances without going to the extreme lengths he did for God's Own Country.
Challengers is earning some of the best reviews of his career and his next film — La Chimera, directed by indie favourite Alice Rohrwacher — is out in the UK on 10 May.
In that Italian-set drama, he plays an archaeologist in the 1980s who becomes embroiled in the theft of various ancient artefacts.
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