At 15 years old, Noah Jupe has already helped Shia LaBeouf exorcise his demons, learned sign language with Emily Blunt, watched Christian Bale drive one of the fastest racing cars of all time, and thwarted Matt Damon’s plans to murder his own wife. Born and raised in North London, Jupe has built one of the strongest résumés in Hollywood, all before graduating high school.
Currently quarantining in London after returning from the Detroit-based set of Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, a 1950s crime drama, Jupe is awaiting the release of A Quiet Place Part II. “We got on set, and they’d held on to the jumper—you know, that classic jumper, the gray one with the pattern,” which Jupe’s character, Marcus, wears. “And I tried it on, and it was way too tight. I looked terrible,” says Jupe, who was 12 when he started filming.
But the original A Quiet Place—an absorbing horror film directed by John Krasinski and starring Blunt, his wife—was far from Jupe’s first acting job. Rather, the teen has been working consistently since he was nine, for the most part in leading roles. With a father who is a filmmaker and a mother who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Jupe took to acting immediately. To date, his credits include the Coen brothers’ 2017 film, Suburbicon, with George Clooney, and last year’s Ford v Ferrari, starring Bale and Damon.
Noah Jupe has helped Shia LaBeouf exorcise his demons, learned sign language with Emily Blunt, and thwarted Matt Damon’s plans to murder his own wife.
One of his most formative roles so far has been in the raw, semi-autobiographical Honey Boy, which LaBeouf wrote and starred in, and which won the Special Jury Award for Vision and Craft at the Sundance Film Festival last year. In it, Jupe plays Otis, a child actor beginning to find fame. “It was fascinating, a real pivotal moment in my life,” he says. “I had just turned 13. And I always say, with each movie, you go places with these characters. But in a way, you almost discover parts of yourself.”
This month sees the release of The Undoing, a new HBO series directed by Susanne Bier. It’s the second project Jupe has worked with Bier on—she also directed him in the glossy 2016 adaptation of John le Carré’s The Night Manager. In The Undoing, an ominous domestic thriller, Jupe plays the son of co-stars Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman. It was “the first time we didn’t get given the last episode until we got on set,” says Jupe. “So it’s the first time I read a script and was like, ‘Who did it?’”
“It was fascinating, a real pivotal moment in my life. I had just turned 13.”
Jupe has also had the unique experience of acting in one of the first films to resume production post-lockdown—Soderbergh’s No Sudden Move, alongside Brendan Fraser, Ray Liotta, Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, and Jon Hamm. “It was quite surreal because I only knew some people through half of their face. I hadn’t seen them without the mask on.”
Back home in North London, Jupe is busy with Zoom press appearances and also thinking through his next move. “It’s interesting because I’ll read a book, for example, and it will have a part for me. And now I kind of know people that I could send that book to. And if they like it, maybe eventually it will get made, which is ultimately what you dream of doing,” he says. “But I still audition, and I still do self-tapes with my parents all the time.”
Bridget Arsenault is the London Editor for AIR MAIL
