THE PULL OF THE HEART

'Babygirl' star Harris Dickinson knew directing 'Urchin' was next for him

- BY EMILY ZEMLER

JENNIFER MCCORD For The Times

"URCHIN" DIRECTOR Harris Dickinson, right, and actor Frank Dillane. Dickinson has long been interested in homelessness. "Urchin," about an addict struggling on the streets, stars Dillane.

Harris Dickinson always knew he wouldn't star in “Urchin,” his feature directorial debut. The charmingly quirky British actor started writing the script, about a man living on the fringes of society, several years ago with the intention of eventually getting it made.

But despite critically acclaimed turns in films such as “Beach Rats,” “Triangle of Sadness” and “Babygirl” (the latter opposite Nicole Kidman), he planned to remain behind the camera when the time came.

"I knew I wouldn't be able to,” says Dickinson, 29, sitting on a sofa in Soho’s Ham Yard Hotel on the day of the U.K. premiere in late September. “I knew it would have been awful.”

Dickinson combed through “maybe 50 or 100” tapes to find the right actor to play Mike, a down-on-his-luck British man struggling with homelessness and drug addiction on the streets of London. Frank Dillane stood out immediately. But even Dillane, best known for TV shows like “The Essex Serpent” and “Fear the Walking Dead,” wasn’t sure why Dickinson wasn’t playing his own lead.

"Harris is such an amazing actor and he is really someone I had admired before meeting him,” says Dillane, 34, sitting next to Dickinson. “There was a part of me, if I'm being completely transparent, that had to really know that Harris didn’t want it, so I could claim it.”

In theaters Friday, “Urchin” isn’t your standard actor-turned-director fare.

It’s a serious film with ambitious scope, reflecting on subject matter that could easily be dismissed as woeful.