Growing pains Stephen Graham on his long road to Adolescence

His latest show has set viewing records in the UK, caught the attention of the prime minister and been the catalyst for a difficult conversation about modern masculinity – all in the space of a couple of weeks.

- Lanre Bakare

But Stephen Graham isn’t an overnight success story.

The blanket coverage being bestowed on Adolescence, Netflix’s four-parter about a young boy who murders a female schoolmate, is the culmination of more than two decades of work for the Scouse actor who – despite forging a Hollywood career – has always come back to British working-class stories.

Graham’s acting career started in his parents’ front room in Kirkby, on the outskirts of Liverpool, where he did impressions of Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda, and Margaret Thatcher. He was spotted by local actor Andrew Schofield (who was Johnny Rotten in Alex Cox’s 1986 film Sid and Nancy), when playing Jim Hawkins in a school production of Treasure Island.

Graham joined Liverpool’s Everyman Youth theatre, an institution that has helped develop the acting chops of everyone from Pete Postlethwaite and Julie Walters to Jonathan Pryce and Bill Nighy – then moved to London.

He got a fortuitous bit part in the Guy Ritchie short The Hard Case – he went along to support a friend, but was asked to audition. He wasn’t cast in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but that small role planted the seed for a breakthrough as Tommy, the cockney wide boy and dog enthusiast in Ritchie’s Snatch, starring Brad Pitt and Benicio del Toro.

Martin Scorsese was impressed and cast Graham in Gangs of New York, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, which led to him playing two real-life gangsters: Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire and Baby Face Nelson in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies. He worked with Scorsese again on The Irishman, but for Graham – who lives in the sleepy Leicestershire village of Ibstock with his wife and co-producer, Hannah Walters, and two children – it’s British drama that interests him the most.