Why doesn’t Hollywood know how to use Stephen Graham?

Posted On October 5, 2025October 5, 2025

Stephen Graham is a bit like the artwork in your parents’ bathroom. It’s been there for ages and you’ve never really paid it much attention, but all of a sudden, you’ve realised it’s actually beautiful. That’s not a perfect metaphor, but you get the idea. 

Over the past few years, the Lancashire-born star has kicked his profile up another gear. 2021 was a particularly good year, as he starred in both the BBC prison drama Time and the stress-inducing one-shot kitchen movie Boiling Point. He followed this up with a brief appearance in the final series of Peaky Blinders, a return to Boiling Point in a TV miniseries, the Disney+ show A Thousand Blow, and, the big one, Adolescence. His performance as the father of a troubled young man landed him a long-overdue Emmy in 2025.

It’s clear that Graham is one of the great talents of his generation. He has proven himself capable of tackling a range of roles across a variety of genres. He can hang with the very best of them, and, in a refreshing change of pace, he comes from a truly working-class background. He’s undeniably a star, but you wouldn’t know that based on his Hollywood career.

In terms of mainstream blockbusters, Graham’s track record is incredibly spotty. He was in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, not a bad film by any stretch, but it did feel like he was late to the party with that franchise. He’s been in two of the ‘Venom’ movies, which are absolutely atrocious, and he lent his voice to a minor part in the 2019 reboot of Hellboy. It is worth pointing out that he’s also been in some non-franchise, but equally impactful films like Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, but never in anything more than a supporting role.

What more does Graham have to do to prove that he is capable of leading a major movie? You could argue that his regional English accent puts off prospective American casting directors, but he’s shown that he can change his voice to fit any requirement. Also, that hasn’t affected Jodie Comer, the most Scouse woman to ever live. He’s been championed by megastars like Johnny Depp and Martin Scorsese, the latter of whom once called him the “British Joe Pesci”.

If one of the greatest directors of all time knows what’s up, why hasn’t the rest of the trade caught on?

One of the ‘problems’ Graham faces in this quest is that he’s too good at making other people look like a million bucks. Like so many of his fellow character actors, he elevates any scene he’s in and is able to lift everyone in the film to his level. Producers and directors would prefer to use this tool to shine a light on their marketable ‘stars’. Just look at the upcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic. Graham’s been getting rave reviews for his performance as the singer’s father, but it’s ultimately just to service the image of Jeremy Allen White.

Hopefully, now that he’s ‘Emmy winner Stephen Graham’, studios will be more open to putting his name further up the poster. Lord knows that he deserves the world, but sadly, that’s not always how things go. 

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