If the story of the kidnapping of the heir to a massive oil fortune sounds like a familiar storyline, that's because you may have just seen it on the big screen in All The Money In The World. But who plays John Paul Getty III in FX's Trust? The upcoming television series and the recent feature film have a lot in common, so it might be easy to confuse their all-star casts, including the handsome young men who play the unwitting kidnapping victim at the heart of both retellings of the stranger-than-fiction event.
In Hollywood, great ideas often come in pairs — think A Bug's Life and Antz, Deep Impact and Armageddon — but it's still odd to see two Academy Award-winning filmmakers decide to tackle the exact same story within three months of each other. In the big screen version by director Ridley Scott (Gladiator), the role of oil baron J. Paul Getty was infamously played by Christopher Plummer after Kevin Spacey was recast, his daughter-in-law Gail Harris by Michelle Williams, former CIA operative Fletcher Chase by Mark Wahlberg, and the kidnapped John Paul Getty III by young Boardwalk Empire alum Charlie Plummer (no relation to the actor who played his grandfather).
In the small screen version created by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), the role of Getty is played by Donald Sutherland, Gail by Hilary Swank, Fletcher by Brendan Fraser, and young John Paul by Harris Dickinson.
But who is Harris Dickinson? If his name isn't familiar to you yet, it probably will be very soon. The 21-year-old actor made waves throughout the indie circuit last year with his feature film debut role in the Sundance darling Beach Rats. The role of Frankie, a teenager in Coney Island struggling with his sexuality while hiding his true self from his friends and family won Dickinson plenty of accolades, and earned him several prestigious nominations — including a Best Male Lead nod from the Independent Spirit Awards (alongside Call Me By Your Name's Timothée Chalamet and Get Out's Daniel Kaluuya), Breakthrough Actor recognition from the Gotham Independent Film Awards, and a win for Best Young British/Irish Performer from the London Film Critics Circle.
According to a profile in Vogue timed with the release of Beach Rats last August, Dickinson grew up in the East London neighborhood of Leytonstone, where he joined a theater group at the age of 15 before dropping out of school at 17 to pursue his career full-time. Although he had appeared in a handful of British TV shows and short films, Beach Rats was both his feature film debut and his introduction to American audiences.
And it doesn't look like Dickinson will be slowing down anytime soon. As if an awards-worthy debut performance and a high-profile television series from a prestigious filmmaker weren't enough, the up-and-comer will next star in the most surefire of genres for raising the profiles of young actors: an adaptation of a popular YA novel. In The Darkest Minds, based on Alexandra Bracken's 2012 book of the same name, Dickinson will play Liam, the leader of a group of young people who were granted superpowers by a disease that wiped out most of America's children. The film also stars Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games), Mandy Moore (This Is Us), and Gwendoline Christie (Game Of Thrones), and will arrive in theaters on Aug. 3 of this year.
If The Darkest Minds is a success, then you could very well be looking at the next Robert Pattinson — whom Dickinson was nominated alongside in the Best Male Lead category at the Independent Spirit Awards, ironically enough. (Pattinson was nominated for his performance in the indie crime drama Good Time.) Get in on the ground floor of the Dickinson hype train by catching him in Trust when it premieres on FX this Sunday, March 25.
