Johnny Flynn
The 2020 film Emma, a screen adaptation of Jane Austen's novel, featured Johnny Flynn in the role of Mr. Knightley. Released in the same year as his performance as David Bowie in the biographical film Stardust, Emma brought Flynn's work as an actor to wide theatrical audiences and stands as one of the more prominent screen credits of his career to date.
Flynn was born on 14 March 1983 in South Africa, with the facts indicating connections to both Cape Town and Johannesburg. A citizen of the United Kingdom, he received his education at The Pilgrims School, Winchester College, Bedales School, and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, the last of which provided formal training in performance. Alongside his acting work, Flynn has pursued careers as a singer, musician, composer, and poet, with his musical output rooted in folk music and conducted in English. His television work includes the role of Dylan Witter in the sitcom Lovesick, a role that established his presence in long-form screen performance.
Flynn's career has continued to expand across both stage and screen into the 2020s. In 2023 he appeared in the film One Life, in which he portrayed a young Nicholas Winton. The Library of Congress has catalogued him under the authorized label "Flynn, Johnny," reflecting his established standing as a recording and performing artist. His role as a young Nicholas Winton in One Life, a figure of historical significance, represents the most recent major film credit listed in the available record and offers a concrete anchor for understanding the scope and direction of his work as an actor.
Quotes by Johnny Flynn
What's quite nice about this whole folk movement is that it's born out of genuine friendship. And nobody's infringing on anybody's space.
I think the two are kind of synonymous for me; songwriting is like my form of diary making. It's how I process the world. Without doing that, I feel kind of lost. The characters that I play often come out in the songs and the challenges that they face, albeit in an abstract way.
I just said, casually, 'You know, I passed up on auditioning for Einstein.' And my friend was like, 'You idiot, you have to do it!' She made me do it. I sent the tapes off assuming that somebody would say, 'Ha ha, very funny.'
I'm married to the girl that I first went out with when I was 16. We were on and off for years; now we're married with a kid, so I don't have that many exes.
Folk music - and what people are now perceiving as being folk music - is music that's quite close to the ground. The songs sound quite old, even if they're new. They sound like they've been sung by different people for years.
Our job as actors is to invent the things that bridge ourselves with the characters, so you have to build something if it's not there - you try and learn what makes people behave in a certain way.
I like the idea of letting the music do its own work and the stories being more expressionful - if that's a word - in people's imagination. I've just got a thing about people and songs telling you how you should feel.
Taking someone else's language and fitting it into your own speech - you learn a lot about other people's brains, doing that.