How to Have Sex's Samuel Bottomley on toxic masculinity: 'Porn is definitely a problem for young men'

It’s not unheard of for young actors, down in London for a glitzy screening of their new film in Leicester Square, to use the opportunity to pull an all-nighter in the capital.

That’s exactly what Samuel Bottomley, a Bafta-nominated rising screen star, did the night before the acclaimed How to Have Sex played at the London Film Festival earlier this month – but sadly he wasn’t out enjoying the delights of the city until the early hours.

“No, my hotel was leaking through the roof, so we had to be evacuated at 12.30am,” the softly spoken Bradford native says, when we meet at a different central London hotel just hours after the event (and a few hours before the LFF screening). “I didn’t get to sleep until about 3.30am this morning!”

The actor, who has starred in acclaimed films and TV shows from Tyrannosaur to Channel 4’s Somewhere Boy is holding up remarkably well as we discuss the film but then at 22, and with a red carpet to walk in the evening, who needs sleep anyway?

How to Have Sex was one of the toasts of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, winning the Un Certain Regard award. Written and directed by Molly Manning Walker, the film follows teenager Tara (played by an extraordinary Mia McKenna Bruce), who heads off to party town Malia in Crete with her two best friends for a post-exams holiday of boozing, clubbing and hooking up.

“When I first read the script, I understood it was special,” Bottomley says of a unsparing, nuanced film that feels thrillingly authentic. “To find a script that just spoke to me in such a young voice. It felt like a voice of my generation.”

The setting is this neon-lit teens-gone-wild party town, with disgustingly coloured cocktails in fishbowls, foam parties, relentless beats, snogging, sweating and sick (one critic described it as “queasily visceral”). Joyous for anyone off on their first jolly, a vision of hell for the rest of us. Filming on location in Malia was an eye-opening experience for Bottomley, who had never been on a lad’s holiday. “It was the closest I’ve got and the closest I’ll get. I’ve done six weeks in Malia, man. That’s like seven years on a normal holiday. It was a nice detox coming off it.”

If How to Have Sex starts off as a riotous, heady party, after the girls meet a group of lads – including Bottomley’s character Paddy – things begin to change. It descends into something much darker about the sexual experience, as the lines around consent begin to blur, and Paddy coerces Tara into having sex with him, leaving her confused, withdrawn and quietly devastated.

The story is sensitively told about a young, post MeToo generation clearly more determined to grapple with the issues depicted than previous ones. “This opened up discussions between me and my peers, from going home and talking about it,” Bottomley says.

Paddy is no pantomime villain; as a character he feels all too real. Bottomley says, “Paddy is supposed to be a genuinely normal guy who’s swallowed up by his ego and his paranoia about not getting this girl.” The cast and creative team talked a lot about toxic masculinity ahead of filming, and the actor says he drew some of his character from the grim misogynistic behaviour that was particularly visible on social media at the time.

He really struggled with the role. “There’s a fine line between empathising and understanding. I found it quite difficult, throughout the whole process of filming, to warm to my character at all.” It was his co-star (and great mate) Shaun Thomas – who plays Badger in the film – who broke the whole thing open for him.

“He said, ‘You’re going to be at the front of this great film that’s like a catalyst for speaking out against things like this. It will help a lot of people.’ Once I got that through my head, it offset everything else.”

Bottomley says, “I didn’t want people to hate him… I wanted people to feel like they knew a Paddy”. He adds that if the characters could have watched the film, they would have realised what was going on and both stopped the situation before it spiralled out of control.

“That’s a massive thing that if they’d seen that, it would have been prevented. So that’s what we’re aiming to do. After filming, it all kicked in how proud I was to be a part of something that potentially could prevent someone’s life from changing in such a negative way," he says. “I think a lot of people my age back home, boys and girls, will watch it and look into themselves, what they’ve done or what they’ve experienced, and ask questions.”

Taking the film to Cannes was an extraordinary experience, he says. “To be there at the end of it all and dance down the red carpet and get so much praise… it was really rewarding, really gratifying.” He remembers “surfing” through the crowds on the Croisette, there to see the movie, with Thomas, and just feeling on cloud nine.

It feels a long way from where he started. When he was young, Bottomley was diagnosed with dyslexia – which makes reading scripts a bit of a slog – and while that made school tough, he found some respite in a drama club at his local church. It was then that he heard about a casting call – and went because it meant missing a day of school.

That audition was for the unflinching, brutal Tyrannosaur, actor Paddy Considine’s directorial debut, and the film that really launched Olivia Colman as a dramatic actor. Bottomley was heartbreaking as Samuel, a young boy struggling in a difficult home situation.

Considine, he says, was “gentle and kind with me. I feel I take a lot from how I was treated and looked after in my first job. I was nurtured into it.”

He is the first actor in his family – his mum works in skincare and his dad is a gas engineer for the council – and there weren’t many films set around Bradford to give him much hope of making it as an actor. Though he remembers his dad showing him Clio Barnard’s extraordinary film The Selfish Giant, which came out in 2013 and thinking, “This is good for us.” It also starred none other than Shaun Thomas.

At the time, he connected to films like Room for Romeo Brass and This is England, “That’s Midlands, which to a northerner is the south – but at least it was getting more northern, and I loved that. Also watching people like Jack O’Connell in Skins.” He would go on to work with O’Connell in the First World War film Private Peaceful in 2012 and sees him as a real role model. “I don’t know who he had, but I had him. He put a bit of blueprint down for a working-class northern actor.”

He didn’t go to drama school – despite what Wikipedia says – in fact Considine advised against it by saying Bottomley should “keep what’s real” about his acting. He has learned on the job and he marvels at the talent he’s worked with including Tim Roth, Sheridan Smith, Pearce Brosnan and Daisy May Cooper among others.

“I’ve been very lucky,” he says. “Oliva Colman and Peter Mullan were really friendly... Tim Roth had a massive impact on me. I’m a big Pulp Fiction fan, big Tarantino fan, so just getting to pick his brain, and of course not forgetting to watch him when he’s acting. He’s got so many cool stories, about Hateful Eight and about Tupac [with whom he starred in Gridlock’d]. For me, that’s your drama school.”

He’s worked consistently over the past decade, from kids’ show Rocket’s Island to Wolf Hall (as the young Thomas Cromwell), a recurring role in TV drama Ackley Bridge, the film adaptation of musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, comedies Ladhood and Am I Being Unreasonable?, and then, last year, the extraordinary Somewhere Boy.

He played Aaron, a teen whose life is upended by the arrival of his cousin Danny, a social outcast hidden away from the world by his father. “You feel for Aaron because he’s just a normal kid, and he’s struggling with anxiety and fitting in. He was a complete contrast to Danny. I found that interesting.”

Danny learns about sex by watching porn on his phone, which Bottomley thinks provides a link to his latest character. “I was asked the question, if porn is an issue for young men, and it definitely is. It’s definitely, definitely, definitely linked to the character of Paddy too. He’s been watching things on the internet and it distorts your perception of sex, I think. It’s young men at the moment. It’s obviously a problem, isn’t it.”

Bottomley was Bafta nominated for the role and earlier this year was named – alongside McKenna-Bruce – on the Screen Star of Tomorrow list, whose alumni run from Benedict Cumberbatch and Gugu Mbatha-Raw to Phoebe Waller Bridge and David Oyelowo.

“Coming from a different place it feels very rare,” he says. “I’m the first person in my family to be an actor, the first person in my town to be nominated for a Bafta, that sort of thing. I’ve been working since I was a kid, so this is nice.”

He has been on an extraordinary run of nuanced roles, often playing damaged, isolated, anxious characters and making them real. While he would take Spider-Man if it was offered – though he jokes it’s unlikely a Spider-Man from Bradford is on the cards – he is loving the parts he's being offered.

“This is my bread and butter. I love it – it feels like Tyrannosaur. If I keep doing films like this for the rest of my life I’d be happy.”

How to Have Sex is released on November 3