FIRMLY DOWN TO EARTH

As he prepares to play John Lennon, Harris Dickinson reveals how nature – and his childhood sweetheart – keep him grounded

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Harris Dickinson is having quite the year. First, he turned up the heat opposite Nicole Kidman in raunchy box-office hit Babygirl. Earlier this month, it was revealed that the Bafta Award-nominated actor will play John Lennon in Sam Mendes’s new project The Beatles: A Four-Film Cinematic Event. But the news to top it all? His engagement, announced last week, to his childhood sweetheart, singer Rose Gray.

Harris met Rose – who recorded her first album, Louder, Please, at Abbey Road Studios – when he was studying at Highams Park School in east London. They have been inseparable ever since, even working together on producing a video for her single Afraid of Nothing.

“We're so close that we can be very direct,” Harris has said of their relationship. “And I think she’s the same with me, where if I had a crap idea, she'd say: ‘No, we're not doing that.”

Taking their romance from the playground to the celebrity circuit is the stuff of fairytales, yet their starry experiences appear to have only brought them closer. “It’s a weird old world,” Harris laughs. “We met Madonna and we were just in the cab giggling on the way home.”

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS