The 11 reasons we are all falling for One Day \u2014 and Dexter<\/a><\/p>\nDid Woodall mind being objectified?<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter One Day, I thought maybe I wouldn\u2019t do another romantic drama unless it was something different. But then Bridget Jones came along and it was different. I love that film. I love what R\u00e9nee Zellweger does with the character and the story is interesting, witty and it\u2019s telling a truth: you never know who you\u2019re going to fall in love with.\u201d<\/p>\n
But you have mentioned feeling vulnerable about being objectified in the past\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. Being objectified can mess with your head a bit. But just being an actor and getting treated as if you\u2019re superimportant is hard to navigate. I\u2019m not saving lives, am I? Bonkers stuff like people you don\u2019t know screaming your name, saying they love you and want to marry you. You cannot let that noise \u2014 good or bad \u2014 get in your head, otherwise you become\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Become what?<\/p>\n
\u201cA knobhead.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2022, on the set of The White Lotus, Woodall fell in love with fellow cast member Meghann Fahy, the American actress who played ditzy housewife Daphne Sullivan. He is generally very tight-lipped about their relationship, but does she keep him in line?<\/p>\n
\u201cOh yeah, we do it for each other,\u201d he says. \u201cYou have to. And family, friends\u2026 The people around you day to day, they have to be real with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Woodall with his partner Meghann Fahy, whom he met while working on The White Lotus<\/p>\n
GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n
Woodall has another weapon dating back to what he has called the \u201cdark years\u201d. He grew up in Shepherd\u2019s Bush in west London, the youngest of three children (he has a brother, Gabriel, and a sister, Constance). His parents are divorced and in his early teens he says he was \u201cacting out\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in trouble at school; I didn\u2019t give a f***. I shaved my head, had notches cut in my eyebrows and I even had a bit of a street name someone gave me [it was \u2018something kid\u2019]. Embarrassing, but then everyone is a bit embarrassing when they\u2019re a teenager, aren\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n
He was smoking a lot of weed and, frankly, wasting a lot of time. That is until he ended up in therapy.<\/p>\n
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Are you a nepo baby? \u201cIn terms of opportunities, no disrespect to my family, I didn\u2019t get any extra leg up\u201d<\/p>\n
DAN KENNEDY FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE. JACKET, LOEWE.COM. T-SHIRT, REISS.COM<\/p>\n
\u201cI started it years prior to having any kind of public profile. I think everyone should do it. It was helpful when my life started to change, otherwise I might have gone loopy.\u201d<\/p>\n
But why did he feel the need for therapy so young?<\/p>\n
\u201cI was lost,\u201d he says. \u201cI mean, every teenager has good and bad moments, don\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodall is from a minor acting dynasty. His father, Andrew Woodall, is an actor (he was an Imperial recruitment officer in Solo: A Star Wars Story), as is his stepfather, Alexander Morton (he was the ghillie Golly Mackenzie in the BBC drama Monarch of the Glen).<\/p>\n
Woodall\u2019s mother, Jane, also attended drama school, but didn\u2019t pursue her career. In fact, Woodall can trace thespian roots all the way back to a silent-film actress called Maxine Elliott, who reputedly had a relationship with King Edward VII.<\/p>\n
It was after getting a couple of A-levels (he passed PE and film studies but flunked philosophy) and folding clothes in a branch of Hollister that the acting gene was switched on for Woodall too.<\/p>\n
Inspired by Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders and Jack O\u2019Connell in the Channel 4 youth drama Skins (the show that also launched Dev Patel, Daniel Kaluuya and Nicholas Hoult), he enrolled at the west London drama school ArtsEd.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a Peaky Blinders flat cap at home but my dad and so many others said, \u2018For goodness\u2019 sake, don\u2019t be a f***ing actor,\u2019 \u201d he says. \u201cI guess they said it as a warning, but it made me really nervous about telling them I wanted to try.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keira Knightley recently admitted to an interviewer that she considers herself a nepo baby (her mother is a playwright, her father an actor). Is Woodall one?<\/p>\n
\u201cI would own it if it were true. I think I definitely benefited from advice or just having the experiences to share with members of my family, but in terms of opportunities, no disrespect to my family, I didn\u2019t get any extra leg up. I\u2019m not saying I didn\u2019t get superlucky, because I did, but I give total credit for that to the genius that is Mike White.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodall leaves his own talent out of the equation. No two ways about it, it\u2019s not just his looks; he fully inhabits his roles. David Nicholls, the author of One Day, has compared his ability to communicate vulnerability even when being \u201cunbearable\u201d to the likes of Robert Redford and Ryan Gosling.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, thank you very much,\u201d Woodall says when I mention it, almost as if I\u2019ve just passed him a mug of tea or opened a door for him.<\/p>\n
But how is he handling it all? Woodall can still just about travel on London Underground. Two days ago it was fine. The time before, not.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it\u2019s hot and sweaty and I realise people are looking at me, I find that hard. I mean, is it because they liked something I was in, or have I just got something on my face?\u201d<\/p>\n
He tells me about a horrible experience he had at the Toronto Film Festival a couple of months ago. Woodall had two movies showing and flew out his mum and dad for the occasion. One lunchtime in a restaurant, he and his mum were having a heart to heart. He won\u2019t say what it was about, but she was crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis woman came over and said, \u2018I can see that you guys are having a really emotional moment and I hate to do this, but can I get a picture?\u2019 \u201d he says, taking up the story. Woodall obliged, but at the same time he was trying to shield his mum\u2019s tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut she saw and was peeking over my shoulder going, \u2018Are you OK? You must be really proud of your son.\u2019 I mean, some people forget themselves. They forget you\u2019re just human.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Alongside Dustin Hoffman in Tuner, due next year<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
But there are nice moments too. One of the films shown at Toronto was Tuner (it\u2019s about a piano tuner who can crack safes, out next year), starring Woodall and Dustin Hoffman. For boomers like Woodall\u2019s dad, Hoffman\u2019s performances in Kramer vs Kramer and All the President\u2019s Men make him a bona fide legend. Andrew Woodall was still blown away when he got to meet him.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad was like, \u2018My boy\u2019s in a movie with Dustin Hoffman!\u2019 It\u2019s so nice. I mean, they\u2019re not used to that level of profile yet. But you don\u2019t necessarily want to get used to it. That\u2019s what makes it magic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodall has held on to that innocence too. He was overwhelmed in New York when he met his heroes, the actors Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad. He spotted them in a hotel bar and was too shy to say hello. But as he left, Paul waved him over and said, \u201cKeep crushing it, man.\u201d Woodall had to lie down in his hotel room to recover.<\/p>\n
Even more touching was his encounter with Leonardo DiCaprio, to whom he is often compared. The pair met briefly at a Baftas party in Los Angeles in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was just leaving and we passed each other in the hallway. I felt I had to say something but all I could come up with was, \u2018Hey, we have the same name.\u2019 He just looked at me, said, \u2018Cool,\u2019 and walked past. I mean, I hope he doesn\u2019t remember that and I get a second chance to say hello, because the roles he chooses, the way he takes his career in different directions, that\u2019s a total inspiration to someone like me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodall is doing something different. He is about to appear with Russell Crowe and Rami Malek in Nuremberg, a dramatisation of the true-life encounter between the US Army psychologist Lt Col Douglas Kelley and Adolf Hitler\u2019s second in command, Hermann Goering, during the war trials that began 80 years ago. It was Kelley\u2019s job to assess whether Goering and other senior Nazis were fit to stand trial. Crowe\u2019s Goering is a portrait in lugubrious porcine arrogance while Malek\u2019s Kelley twitches with nervous ambition (Kelley hoped to establish a common psychological trait that would explain Nazi evil, and then write a book about it). Meanwhile, Woodall plays Howard Triest, a German-speaking Jew who worked as a translator and, if anything, his story is extraordinary enough to warrant a film by itself.<\/p>\n
Hailing from Munich, the Triest family fled to Luxembourg the day before the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. They planned to continue to the US but, short of money, sent 16-year-old Howard ahead alone. He made it to New York, but the rest of the family were detained in France and his parents were eventually murdered at Auschwitz.<\/p>\n
Three years after arriving in the US, Triest was finally allowed to join the army (initially he was rejected because he was German) and he landed in Normandy shortly after D-Day. Speaking German quickly made him a valuable asset as the Allies captured the fleeing German high command.<\/p>\n
Triest found himself translating not only for the captured Goering but also Rudolf Hoess, the commander of Auschwitz and the man responsible for murdering his family. Triest won the trust of many Nazi prisoners (especially Julius Streicher, editor of the antisemitic magazine Der St\u00fcrmer) because he was blond and blue-eyed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found it uncomfortable that Russell was able to make Goering anything other than a monster. The scenes with his family are touching; he can even be charming. But the gut punch is where James [Vanderbilt, Nuremberg\u2019s director] cuts to original footage from the liberation of the death camps. That day on set was so intense; it felt like the first time you ever saw it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Nuremberg: what Russell Crowe\u2019s new film gets right \u2014 and wrong<\/a><\/p>\n![\"RELEASE](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/70eff6b2-6a1c-4587-bf66-6c849ff42911.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
With Rami Malek in his latest release, Nuremberg<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
Woodall and I are in the Corinthia hotel just off Whitehall in London. During the Second World War, the building was requisitioned by the government and the D-Day landings were partly planned here in room 424.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat? I did not know that,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I think that says something: there aren\u2019t many survivors from the Holocaust left. Not many who lived through the Second World War either. But this important history can still be right there, under your feet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nuremberg was filmed in Budapest last year. What was it like on set? There couldn\u2019t have been many laughs off-camera, I suggest.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh no, we were all in the same hotel so we let off steam. Except for Russell; he rented a house just outside the town by himself. But he threw a couple of dinner parties.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Nuremberg, Goering appeared haughtily indifferent to facing charges of crimes against humanity, as if they were just so many accumulated parking tickets. He almost managed to brush off the case made by US Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson too. It was only the forensic cross-examination by the British lawyer Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (played by Richard E Grant) that saved the day. In the film, Crowe is all charming guile until caught out. Once he\u2019s unable to publicly betray Adolf Hitler, he exudes pure menace.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Russell Crowe, there\u2019s a lot of alpha energy, but he\u2019s a good bloke\u201d<\/p>\n
DAN KENNEDY FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE. JACKET, UK.BURBERRY.COM. VEST, REISS.COM. TROUSERS, ARMANI.COM<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd being around that energy was incredible,\u201d Woodall says. \u201cI mean, Russell Crowe is totally alpha. He\u2019s a proper film star. I was intimidated by him when we first met, but he took me under his wing a bit. There\u2019s a lot of alpha energy, but he\u2019s a good bloke underneath.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ten Nazis were executed following the Nuremberg trial, with Goering managing to take his own life the day before he was due to be hanged. But Kelley himself later committed suicide, believing America was complacent about the possibility that Nazism could flourish anywhere. The film ends with a warning: authoritarianism doesn\u2019t always mean men marching around in \u201cscary uniforms\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, what\u2019s happening in the world is, you know, sickening and terrifying,\u201d Woodall says, taking up the theme. \u201cThe film aims to honour the Jews that died in the Holocaust and remind people that these men who committed monstrous crimes were still ordinary people. They could be your friends, your neighbours. It\u2019s sobering, but ultimately this film makes you look at yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodall is enjoying some time off. He\u2019s living with his older brother, Gabriel, watching his beloved Chelsea FC and cooking his girlfriend his signature steak or seafood linguine whenever he gets the chance. But he\u2019s also contemplating his next roles.<\/p>\n
The next White Lotus goes into production next year, this time set on the French Riviera and in Paris. Mike White usually opts for an entirely new cast for each series, but he did bring back Jennifer Coolidge after her barnstorming performance in series one. Woodall says he is still in contact with White. Will he be returning?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I\u2019m not,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd guess what: I\u2019m not going to be James Bond or disappear into any bedrooms with Tom Hollander again either.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nuremberg is in cinemas now. Tuner is due for release in early 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My favourite performance by the actor Leo Woodall is the one he\u2019s doing right now in front of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-262124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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