Meet Joe Cole, the British Breakout Star of A Prayer Before Dawn

Michael Fassbender as IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in Hunger. Tahar Tahim as homeless petty thief Malik in A Prophet. Tom Hardy as British criminal legend Charles Bronson in the titular biopic. All very physical, borderline-pummelling roles set in the unforgiving abyss of penitentiaries. All iconic breakout roles for talented young thesps who were yearning to show the full breadth of their dramatic chops. And this summer, people having been labelling the bone-crunching A Prayer Before Dawn as Joe Cole’s very own ‘Hunger’ moment – chief among them the 29-year-old South Londoner himself, who says it’s the furthest he’s ever ventured out of his comfort zone as an actor.

“One of the reasons I take jobs is based on how challenging they’re going to be, and I guess unconsciously I was looking for this kind of intense and immersive movie,” the well-mannered Cole tells Another Man over the phone about his lead role in the harrowing, nearly dialogue-free drama, in which he transforms into an English boxer and heroin addict sent to one of Thailand’s most savage and terrifying prisons. “I thought Billy [Moore]’s extraordinary true story would be a huge challenge to undertake.”

Based on the 2014 memoir of former prisoner and boxer Billy Moore, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s cinematic adaptation has all the trappings of a true redemption story, with a wounded, plump-lipped protagonist ready to throw in the towel until he decides to take up Muay Thai to survive inside the notoriously merciless Bang Kwang Central Prison. Shot over three months in a cacophonous active jail north of Bangkok, Cole talks of “getting the shit kicked out” of him for roughly 18 hours a day, training alongside Muay Thai champions and playing opposite highly tatted former inmates who spoke zero English.

“One of the reasons I take jobs is based on how challenging they’re going to be, and I guess unconsciously I was looking for this kind of intense and immersive movie” – Joe Cole

“When I went to Thailand for the pre-production, I did a lot of improvisation with Thai actors and what [director Sauvaire and I] found was that the less Thai I spoke, and the less English they spoke, the more interesting our interactions were,” recalls Cole. “So I stopped learning Thai, and as a result of that, the film is all about gesture and body language. It was actually quite nice not to talk very much on set because it allowed me to be immersed in the world I needed to inhabit and to really feel what Billy would have felt like when he was in prison.”

Cole, the eldest of five brothers, describes himself as quite a sporty fellow, having done some judo and jujitsu in the past. In prepping for the part of Billy, he had to unlearn much of that training and familiarise himself with Thai boxing’s whole new set of rules, or risk repeatedly getting knees and feet in the face. Taking on Moore’s Liverpudlian accent and at times turbulent demeanour, Cole’s remarkable performance conveys the frightening malaise of inner conflict and a captivatingly muted kind of vulnerability.

“I had to walk convincingly in heels, I had to embody that side of the character, while also having to box and fight... I was terrified, so I knew I needed to do it” – Joe Cole

A Prayer Before Dawn also wasn’t the first time the actor – perhaps best known on home turf for his four-season-strong turn as John Shelby, a fan-favourite criminal in the 1920s Birmingham gangland of BBC TV’s Peaky Blinders – portrayed a boxer wrestling with a multiplicity of demons. In the 2015 BAFTA-nominated coming-of-age short Slap, Cole portrays a cross-dressing male boxer who finds a sense of freedom through make-up and female attire. “Again, it was the challenge that appealed to be,” Cole enthuses when asked about taking on such a meaty role in a student film. “I had to walk convincingly in heels, I had to embody that side of the character, while also having to box and fight. I think we had about two weeks of preparation. I was terrified, so I knew I needed to do it.”

Taken together, A Prayer Before Dawn and Slap build a strong case for the broad range of masculinities that ought to be reflected in the realm of sports. Cole remembers viewers getting mixed up when it came to labelling his character and distinguishing between notions of gender and sexuality. “People at times associate cross-dressing with homosexuality, and seem to still get confused,” he points out. “People would ask me if my character was gay – but no, it’s just something certain people do as a form of expression. I met people who cross-dress and have a very standard life, with a family and kids. Every few weeks, they’ll dress up as a woman, want to be called by a different name and embody a different spirit. That’s what we were trying to shed light on and help people understand.”

“People would ask me if my character was gay – but no, it’s just something certain people do as a form of expression... That’s what we were trying to shed light on and help people understand.”

With all that said, the big cultural conversation piece Cole has contributed to in 2018 is Black Mirror’s dating app-themed episode Hang The DJ, about an omnipotent, highly regulated and sentient tool called The System that pairs couples together and gives them non-negotiable expiry dates as it searches for their “perfect” algorithmic matches. Cole scored a BAFTA nomination for his sensitive portrayal of the love-struck Frank, who clearly isn’t thrilled with how the technology takes personal choice entirely out of the equation. When I wonder why the episode struck such a deeply resonant chord with viewers, he likens it to a modern-day rom-com. “It’s about finding the person you want to be with, and I think that’s what a lot of people are trying to do. Plus, it’s set in the world of dating apps, which are very commonplace now and have hugely come to the fore in the last five years, but haven’t really been explored in film and on television yet.”

Back in January, Cole spoke to Vanity Fair about the largely dystopian anthology series, where he was quoted as saying: “If an alien came down from Mars and saw us all taking selfies and the like, I think it’d up and leave. It’d think we were all mad.” I ask him to elaborate on what he was astutely hinting at there – and whether he’s concerned about how people of our generation relate to one another via these technologies. “I think it’s all so new, fresh and moving so quickly with selfies, social media and dating apps,” he argues. “They can be brilliant and enhance our lives and experiences, but we need to learn to manage them, for the sake of our mental health. It’s something we’ll probably learn how to do. At the moment, it’s early days. They have a place and they’re not going away, but it’s about how we incorporate them into our lives in a healthy way.”

A Prayer Before Dawn is now in theatres. Hang The DJ is available for streaming on Netflix. Slap can be viewed here