Callum Turner Takes the Scenic Route

For the latest cover of Esquire Edge, we caught up with the British actor for a walk in the park

Callum Turner really doesn’t like being late. I know this because he calls me, exactly at our planned meeting time of 1 o’clock, to say that he will be another 10 minutes. He apologises again, and will explain when he’s here, but it is not really a problem. We’re meeting at a coffee shop in Regent’s Park – the plan is to walk his dog – and the summer showers have just stopped. By the time the actor arrives with Golo in tow, the sun has pushed apart the last of June’s unseasonal clouds. Flat whites ordered, we head off in search of a bench.

A palpable energy surrounds the 36-year-old, which cannot solely be attributed to the fact that he’s a six-foot-two model-turned-actor who has appeared on our screens in films including Eternity, Emma, and two Harry Potter spin-offs. He is, right now, among the most talked-about people in the country. Two days before this very conversation, he has been on the front of most national papers, holding hands with one of pop’s brightest stars. There is, I am pleased to report, an undeniable pep in his step.

Shirt, £785, jumper, £1,670, jeans, £905, loafers, £1,280, watch, £33,000; all Louis Vuitton

A bench, it turns out, is hard to find. But Turner is good company as we embark on our little mission throughout the wilds of a central London park: we discuss growing up in the city, teenage years spent on the King’s Road, and where we learnt to drive. “The best thing about London is the parks,” Turner tells me, as we near somewhere to sit after a 20-minute search. “You go to every other major city, and we have everything that everyone else has. Maybe they have a beach. If you’re going to include Paris, New York, Rome, Milan, all the cities pretty much have the same shit. But no one has parks like this.”

By the time we’re sitting down, across from playing fields for Golo (named after former Chelsea player N’Golo Kanté, Turner’s dog is “a third rottweiler, collie and labrador”), my dutiful list of questions is still unchecked. It almost feels like we are two friends catching up. OK sure, there is still that aforementioned buzz. And, yes, at the café, a group of girls (and their mother) had feverishly requested a selfie with the actor. Plus, there have been many excited stares in his direction during our bench-finding mission. As for Turner? He’s learning how to tune out the noise.

Turner grew up on the top floor of Caple House, an apartment block located on a west London estate, run by the Guinness Trust. He was raised by a single mother, Rosemary, who was a club promoter. His two half-siblings grew up in Australia with Turner’s father, Laurence. A sporty kid, at 16, he began to play for a semi-professional football team of players who had dropped out of the big leagues and were trying to come back. “I actually lied to get in,” Turner says, with the first of many winks. “I said I played for QPR.” He trained five days a week, but was required to attend sixth-form college at the same time, which meant that Turner would wake up at 6am, head to West Dulwich for 7am and train until 9am. Then he would travel to his college near Richmond Park.

It was, he recalls, “totally exhausting”. After a few months, he quit that college, tried out a different one in Putney, but the whole process never really improved. “After a season, it just wasn’t going to work out, I could see that,” Turner says, still sounding a little frustrated and perplexed by the experience. Was it hard to let go of that particular teenage dream? Turner recalls later playing for Bedford’s semi-professional team and realising that he simply “didn’t have that athlete’s mindset”. “I played for them two or three times and I loved it, but it wasn’t what I was going to do as a job.”

Shirt, £300, blazer, £1,200, pants, £375; all Paul Smith. Watch, £12,000, bracelet, £8,750; all Cartier. Shoes, £1,410, John Lobb

Life moved on, and after a call from his mother’s stylist friend, he started to model. That Turner, who is today making an off-duty look of jeans and a fleece appear aspirational, was scouted seems like a natural law of the universe. He spent months in Milan and Paris, though most formative was the half-year he lived in Japan. “Going there, it was the total opposite of my existence, which was living in Chelsea and playing football,” he says. “All of a sudden there was this whole other world: it was exciting and, in a different way, glamorous.”

Shirts, £295, pants, £635, robe, £525; all Anderson & Sheppard. Shoes, £1430, John Lobb Watch, £12,000, bracelet, £8,750; all Cartier.

When Turner talks about that period, it is not with glassy-eyed nostalgia but a gentle self-analysis. “The possibilities felt endless even if, in that moment, they weren’t necessarily endless,” he says, referring to this as his “gap year” (though as Turner modelled for Burberry, it’s safe to say this time was more productive than most people’s years off). At 19, he returned to London, stopped modelling and started work at the designer department store Dover Street Market in Mayfair. He remembers thinking at the time: “I really hope that I get to explore the world all the time and am never held to one place for a long period. I don’t know what that is, that desire to roam or desire to run.”

Does he still feel that way? “Of course, yeah.”

Turner likes movies. He mentions directors, actors and writers at every opportunity. Last year, when I interviewed George MacKay, who starred alongside Turner in the 2025 film Rose of Nevada, he told me: “Callum has seen everything. I was genuinely really inspired by how much canon he consumes.” If Turner had gone to university, he probably would have studied English or film, he tells me, and so it was probably only a matter of time then before Turner started to audition.

He didn’t attend drama school and he certainly doesn’t share the privileged background of some of his peers, but Turner had relatively quick success in his early 20s, appearing in ITV dramas as well as Jack Thorne’s superior teenage drama Glue in 2014. Jake Gyllenhaal murders him in the surprisingly violent video for “Time to Dance” by French band The Shoes. Turner, who has leading-man looks but also an out-of-time soulfulness, began to get noticed. The combination of starring in 2018’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and a very popular BBC conspiracy thriller (2019’s The Capture) introduced him to a lot more people. His role as Frank Churchill in Autumn de Wilde’s well-received Emma won over period-drama fans (a sizeable demographic in this country).

There’s a recognisable career in there for Turner, one trodden by many British actors before him. Period dramas, respectable Sunday night television shows, a beloved franchise or two. But it’s fair to say that in recent years, he has made a few more left-field choices. There was the aforementioned Rose of Nevada, in which he played a Cornish fisherman who is lost both at sea and in life. The film, directed by Mark Jenkin, was shot on a Bolex Super 16 camera, which can only record for 27 seconds at a time. The actor enjoyed the subtle parameter shift. “You can’t play basketball in a tennis court,” he says, “and you have to know what game you’re playing.”

Last year, he also played the co-lead in Eternity, a romantic drama in which Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) finds herself in purgatory and must decide who she wants to spend the afterlife with: her dutiful second husband Larry (Miles Teller) or her more dashing first husband Luke (Turner), who died in the Korean War. Turner’s role is complicated; he has to be charming enough to steal Joan’s attention, but also not a total dick. David Freyne, the film’s writer-director, tells me that he had a “real fear that, in the wrong hands, Luke was just a handsome baddie”. “Callum really understood and wanted to explore the insecurities of this man,” he says. “He just gave it so many layers that I wasn’t expecting.”

That sentiment crops up again when I talk to Karim Aïnouz, the Brazilian film director whose 2026 satire Rosebush Pruning provided Turner with his biggest challenge yet. Turner plays Edward, our entry point into an elitist, incestuous New York family who are living out their destructive fantasies in Spain. “What really surprised me about his performance was how we don’t really know if he’s going to go left or right,” Aïnouz says. “There’s an electricity in the way that he behaves.”

interviewed Turner two years before this, when he was doing press for The Boys in the Boat, a true-story film about rowers at the 1936 Olympics, which was directed by George Clooney. Clooney was present when I spoke to Turner and, although those two had spent a lot of time together, I had the impression that neither Turner nor I could quite believe we were sitting in a room with the George Clooney. But since then, it’s fair to say Turner’s own fame has somewhat rocketed, and not simply because of his film choices. He also fell in love with a pop star.

Turner was briefly introduced to Dua Lipa at The River Cafe in London, though they properly met at a mutual friend’s birthday dinner in Los Angeles. They realised they were reading the same book: Trust by Hernan Diaz. Paparazzi shots of the pair appeared in early 2024 and from then on, the romance evolved in the spotlight. Turner became a mainstay in the 30-year-old’s Instagram: there they are at Glastonbury (the same year Lipa headlined the Somerset festival); in a Tokyo backstreet; on a dinner date in New York. Lipa has 88 million followers, which makes Turner, by default, an internet boyfriend.

They recently went on safari in South Africa, which Turner calls “the most magical holiday”. Turner is lucky to have found someone who likes travelling as much as he does, I point out. “We’re all part of the same circus,” he says, before echoing an earlier sentiment. “We both have the same thing in our head that says, ‘Run, roam, see the world, explore and discover.’ And yeah, we love doing it together.”

“It’s nice,” he adds, “to find someone that you love and who loves you and you want to be around all the time.”

Shirt, £530, blazer, £1,440, pants, £590; all IM Issey Miyake. Shoes, £1,400, John Lobb. Hat, £205, Anderson & Sheppard

Lipa confirmed their engagement last autumn; rumours about nuptials started immediately afterwards. Two days before this walk in the park, photographs of the couple walking out of Marylebone Town Hall exploded onto social media – she wore Schiaparelli, he wore Ferragamo, they both look radiant. When I offer congratulations, Turner thanks me, but says he doesn’t want to talk about it too much. Perhaps in a post-nuptial giddiness, he then immediately says: “It was amazing, and it was… it was the most beautiful day of my life.” Call me a schmuck, but the enthusiasm is a little infectious. They’re like a royal couple right now, I say. “We went to the park yesterday, and everyone who walked past said, ‘Congratulations’. It was pretty surreal.”

Does it ever feel weird that so many people are talking about your wedding?

Hand tailored tuxedo, £3,500. Ralph Lauren Purple Label Top, £125, Polo Ralph Lauren. Shoes, £1430, John Lobb. Watch, £7950, Cartier

“It’s a weird thing in general when you have such a personal thing happen and then it’s also spoken about publicly and by a lot of people,” he says, before sharing a story about his friend, the actor Anton Yelchin, who was fatally injured by his own car in 2016. “I remember when he died, it was an unbelievably horrific moment for me that was being shared by so many other people, and I found that so discombobulating because I didn’t understand the grief anyway, and then it was being talked about by so many people,” Turner says. “And I think it’s something that I’ve gotten used to over the years because of experiences, but I don’t think that’s ever going to be… I think you just gotta ignore it, is what you got to do.”

Shirt £785, knit, £1,320, jeans, £1,320, coat, £3,400, loafers, £1,180; all Louis Vuitton

In the spirit of addressing public interest, and as we are conversation hopping, I ask about the other rumour that has circled Turner for years, one that has recently reached fever pitch: that he might be the next Bond.

“I’m not going to comment on that either,” he says, with a slight laugh. “I don’t know anything, so I can’t comment. There’s nothing for me to comment on.”

I mention media reports from the start of the year, which claimed he had been picked as Bond. More rumours?

Shirt £785, knit, £1,320, jeans, £1,320, coat, £3,400, loafers, £1,180; all Louis Vuitton

Turner repeats his refrain. “There’s nothing for me to comment on, and I think it’s best just to not say anything.”

Isn’t it nice, I wonder out loud, that people think he’s a charming actor who would be good in a role that people love?

“I just know I’m not going to comment on it,” he says, “just because there’s no point in commenting on it in this moment.”

Would he even want to play Bond?

“I’m not going to comment,” he says, for a final time. “It’s just so loaded, it’s just such a loaded thing.”

I will note that each “no comment” – there were at least four! – is as convivial as the last. I end by telling him that I think he’d make a good Bond, to which Turner replies, with good humour, “I appreciate that.”

Turner is almost compulsively curious. He asks me about my exercise routine, my dog, my family. We talk about some of our favourite holiday destinations, including Naples (“I got on the train to Naples, and when I got off, I was like, ‘Oh man, I’ve been here before,’” he says) and Marseille (where he recently went on his stag do with his mates: they swam and played football). He’s been listening to a podcast about the Louisiana Purchase and reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Plus, he has countless recommendations, from restaurants in tiny Italian harbours and Max Richter albums to horror films from the Eighties. (He is also curious about his health. The reason for his slight delay? He was having a full-body scan.)

It’s easy to stray off course, but there is an actual film to discuss. In a couple of weeks, Turner will be back on screens in One Night Only, playing a romantic lead opposite Monica Barbaro. The movie is set in an alternate version of America, where pre-marital sex is outlawed, with an exception for a single night in the year. “It’s kind of like The Purge but for sex,” Turner says, referring to the dystopian horror film that takes place on the one night of the year when all crime, including murder, is legal. I laugh at Turner’s elevator pitch. “I laughed throughout reading the script,” he notes.

The film’s director Will Gluck (also behind mega smash Anyone But You) is an “adrenaline junkie on set”, Turner says. “He’d have these moments where he’d go, ‘It’s not working’, and we’d rewrite the whole scene and do it totally improvised.” One of those scenes – a flirty repartee between Turner and Barbaro in the back of a limousine – made it into the trailer. They have good chemistry. When I ask Barbaro about her experience with Turner, she praises his ability to just get on with things: “He has a willingness to try things without knowing how it’s all going to pan out, which is a wonderful quality in an acting partner. I guess in a way that allowed for constant surprises between our characters.”

Turner talks so much about directors that I’m surprised he hasn’t followed that instinct more often. In 2018, he directed a short film, Shift the Plane, about a working-class adolescent who is raising his younger sibling, but hasn’t pursued it further. “I think directors are phenomenal beings,” he says. “I feel like the artist, but in a different way. I feel like much more of a collaborator, a cog in a system, rather than the guy who runs the system.”

Turner has to head off soon, and it looks like it might rain, so we begin to retrace our steps. What would he like the next decade to look like? “More of the same,” he begins, before adding, “family”. That’s a priority? “Obviously, yeah, I’m 36. I’d like to have a family and raise some kids.” More immediately, he will be heading to New York for the summer to shoot a remake of the 1981 psychological horror Possession. This year Turner has also, with characteristic ambition, set himself the task of learning French.

Sure, Turner likes to go on holiday, but he hasn’t really stopped. I’m reminded of stories he has talked about in interviews before: how he gave himself three years to make acting work, how he had to drop significant weight when he was modelling. Is it fair to say that he’s hard on himself? “I’m more determined than hard on myself,” he says. “I like structure, I like routine and I like rhythm.”

Shirt £785, knit, £1,320, jeans, £3,400; all Louis Vuitton

We’re back at the café. He’s off to the gym. Later, he’s catching up with his siblings. When Turner asks how I’m spending my week, I tell him that I’m heading to a music festival in Barcelona and, naturally, he has one final recommendation for me. I absolutely have to visit a restaurant by the name of Gresca. “Okay,” I tell him, though perhaps he can tell this is not at the very top of my priority list. “You gotta go to Gresca,” he says again, before we hug and head off in different directions.

A few days later, while I am on an impromptu date and overtaken by a sense of European romance, I actually take a taxi to Gresca. The restaurant is gorgeous, with an open kitchen and well-dressed patrons sitting at a counter. But, as an apologetic Spanish waitress tells me, there are no tables left. I suspect this might have turned out differently if I were an actor accompanied by a pop star, but it is hard to mind too much: Turner just wanted to share a good time. And when, in the following days, photos emerge of Lipa and Turner’s second wedding celebration, a glamorous-as-hell party in Sicily, it is very clear that he knows exactly how to do that. ○

‘One Night Only’ is out in cinemas 28 August

Via: Esquire