Who Is Owen Cooper, the First-Time Actor and Emmy Winner Who Plays Jamie in 'Adolescence?'

Netflix's harrowing miniseries Adolescence premiered in March 2025 and quickly became this year's Baby Reindeer-esque word-of-mouth hit, thanks in large part to its breakout star, Owen Cooper. In the U.K.-set series, rising star Cooper plays Jamie, a 13-year-old boy accused of stabbing a female classmate to death, across four single-take episodes. Inspired by the recent rise of knife crime in the U.K., the drama is an examination of toxic masculinity and how social media can radicalize young men, with Cooper delivering a layered, terrified performance.

As nearly all of Adolescence's viewers have noted, it's amazing to consider that the Netflix series is the 15-year-old's first-ever professional role. With the 2025 Emmys, where Adolescence won several awards, including Best Limited or Anthology Series, Cooper even made Emmys history. Read on to learn more about Owen Cooper, including which highly anticipated 2026 movie you can see him in next.

Owen Cooper is the youngest male to win an Emmy award for acting.

At the 2025 Emmys, Cooper took home the award for best supporting actor in a limited or anthology series. The 15-year-old is now the youngest-ever male actor to win an acting award in Emmys history. (The youngest winner of all time is Roxana Zal, who was 14 when she won best supporting actress in 1984 for playing Amelia Bennett in the TV movie Something About Amelia.)

"Standing up here is just so surreal," Cooper said in his acceptance speech. "Honestly, when I started these drama classes a couple years back, I didn't expect to be even in the United States, never mind here. I think tonight proves that, if you listen and you focus and you step out of your comfort zone, you can achieve anything in life."

"I was nothing about three years ago. I'm here now, so I think if you're listening and you're focusing, you just step out of your comfort zone just a little bit. Who cares if you get embarrassed? Anything can be possible."

"A big thanks to my parents, to my mum, my dad, my family, the ones who love me, the ones who I love," he added, before thanking his co-stars, Netflix, and the team behind Adolescence, saying that his award "belongs to the people behind the camera."

Owen Cooper is a 15-year-old rising star from Northern England.

Cooper, 15, grew up in Warrington, a town near Liverpool in Northern England. In an interview with i-D, the young star said he dreamed of being a football player when he was younger, and that acting "wasn’t really in [his] DNA," until he joined a drama club after watching Tom Holland's 2012 film The Impossible.

Cooper explained in an interview with Variety that he began taking acting lessons and signed with an agency. "It’s an agency called The Drama Mob. And the lessons were just hourly lessons on a Tuesday, where we’d get a piece of script and just read it off. But I was just doing it for a hobby and didn’t expect much from it. And then when Adolescence came, I obviously took it a lot more seriously. And I just took it on the chin, really, and just did it."

Episode 3 of 'Adolescence' was Cooper's first time acting professionally.

To play Jamie in Adolescence, Cooper, who was 14 at the time, had to perform in one-take episodes that were filmed from start to finish in a continuous shot. The miniseries's standout third episode was not only the first Cooper filmed for the show, but also his first-ever time on a professional set.

"I didn’t know any better really!" Cooper told Variety about the one-shot filming. "When [director] Phil [Barantini] told me about the one-shot thing, I thought he was just talking about like one episode, or one quarter of an episode. But then he said all four episodes are being shot in one take. And I immediately thought I’d never, ever be able to do this. But everyone helped me through it...So I’d definitely do one shot again."

Owen Cooper's on-screen dad Stephen Graham compared him to a young Jodie Comer.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, veteran actor Stephen Graham—who co-created, co-wrote, and plays Jaime's father Eddie in Adolescence—opened up about recognizing Cooper's talent during their chemistry read during the show's casting. Graham compared Cooper's talent to one of his past co-stars, another young actor Graham worked with before they rose to fame: Killing Eve star Jodie Comer.

"There was just a piece of magic within," Graham said of Cooper. "I don’t mean this to sound trite, but you try and catch lightning in a bottle. We were just in the moment of something, and he looked at me in a certain way…And what I saw in Owen was the exact same thing I saw in Jodie Comer when Jodie was 17."

Graham and Comer both starred in the 2012 crime miniseries Good Cop, years before the actress went on to win an Emmy and a BAFTA for Killing Eve, as well as a Tony for her one-woman play Prima Facie.

"I saw the same kind of ability, the same kind of natural talent, and just a real presence," Graham added, comparing Cooper to Comer. "He just blew my mind."

Cooper counts Tom Holland, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robert De Niro among his role models.

In addition to Tom Holland, Cooper counts some of the world's most lauded actors among his career role models.

"I would love Leonardo DiCaprio’s career," he said to British Vogue, when told that he has been compared to the Oscar winner. "And Robert De Niro’s. And Al Pacino’s. Those films like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Godfather were all before my time. But Wolf of Wall Street, Django Unchained, Inception, and Shutter Island…I don’t think Leonardo DiCaprio’s in a bad film."

The 15-year-old also added that he'd "love to do stunts... to an extent. "Probably not like Tom Cruise," he added. "I’m scared enough going on roller coasters, let alone hanging off the side of a plane. But jumping off the side of a cliff into the water? I could probably do that."

Owen Cooper's first film role will be costarring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

Following Adolescence, Cooper is set to appear in both a TV rom-com and a highly anticipated book-to-movie adaptation. First, he'll play a role in the upcoming BBC comedy series Film Club, which is co-created by and starring Aimee Lou Wood of Sex Education and The White Lotus. The show follows longtime friends Evie (Wood) and Noa (Nabhaan Rizwan) as they're "forced to consider for the first time they might be more than just friends," as reported by BBC, with Cooper playing "Evie’s annoying neighbor Callum."

After that, Cooper will play the young version of Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell's divisive adaptation of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. The movie is set to be released on February 13, and he will appear alongside Jacob Elordi and Oscar nominees Margot Robbie and Hong Chau.