To be crowned an Internet Boyfriend is a rite of passage for any young, hot actor in 2024, and Callum Turner is the latest to join their ranks. Following in the footsteps of contemporaries such as Jacob Elordi and Jeremy Allen White, Turner has set the gossip pages alight via a rumoured romantic entanglement with Dua Lipa. Between the blurry, TMZ-obtained footage of the pair kissing at the premiere of Masters of the Air, pap shots of an alleged date, and blind items sent into Instagram’s foremost celebrity tea account, @Deuxmoi, it has all the hallmarks of a fabulous celebrity pairing.
Love life aside, 2024 is shaping up to be a exciting year for Turner. His latest project, The Boys in the Boat, is a sports drama about the gold medal-winning US rowing team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Directed by George Clooney and led by Turner, the film follows the true story of how eight underdogs broke out of the Great Depression. Turner also appears in Masters of the Air, Apple TV+’s latest big budget WWII drama, co-produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman and due for release later this month. His co-stars? Barry Keoghan, Austin Butler, and the new Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, to name three.
For those still unacquainted, here are some key facts about Callum Turner.
He’s a born and bred Londoner
Despite impressive accent work in The Only Living Boy in New York and Mobile Homes, Turner is, in fact, British. The 33-year-old hails from a West London estate, and grew up as a fervent supporter of his local football team, Chelsea. His true accent is often masked by the so-called Received Pronunciation (or RP) he has adopted for roles such as Emma’s Frank Churchill.
You’ve probably seen Callum Turner before
Between the Fantastic Beasts franchise, BBC miniseries The Capture, Queen & Country, and the BBC adaptation of War & Peace, Turner has been a regular on UK screens for a while now. He was also scouted as a model at 17, although—despite being a Burberry poster boy—he previously told British Vogue he “wasn’t that successful.”
He didn’t actually train to be an actor
Turner shared in a previous interview that he dropped out of school to pursue a career in soccer, and he played semi-professionally for a season. When he was 19, and working in a shop, he signed up to a casting website and started auditioning for acting jobs.
He can direct, too
In 2018, Turner directed his debut short film, Shift the Plane. Inspired by his own experiences growing up on an estate, “It’s about someone who can’t afford, even though they have a full-time job, to move out of their family home,” he said. “It shows what happens when a man or woman stays somewhere too long,” Turner explained.
He’s had a famous girlfriend before
Turner dated his former co-star Vanessa Kirby for four years. They met on the set of Queen & Country back in 2014, and started dating a year later.
This story was originally published on Vogue.com.
