In the new film La Chimera (now in select theaters), Josh O’Connor’s Arthur, an irascible British archeologist reunited with his old gang of Italian tomb raiders, embarks on a personal quest with no particular destination. He is ostensibly after a lost love, and maybe a gateway to the afterlife. But as he goes about discovering valuable artifacts deep in the Tuscan ground, we observe a man fueled by endless curiosity. His motivations are less material than those of his fellow grimy scavengers—but perhaps similar to those of Alice Rohrwacher, a filmmaker of melancholic, mystical whimsy.

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After spending an hour with O’Connor, it’s clear these traits also align with him. The British actor best known for originating the role of Charles in The Crown, to Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning acclaim, is graduating to movie-star status this spring with his double bill in La Chimera and Challengers, the latter of which hits theaters on April 26. (It was delayed from a planned September 2023 premiere due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.) He demonstrates startling range in each film, and arguably steals both. In the former, he’s the lead, speaking (deliberately) clunky Italian among a fluent cast, violent storms of feeling playing out across his watchful gaze. In the latter, he’s one third of a heated love triangle with Zendaya and Mike Faist, playing a pulsating psychosexual power game in classic Luca Guadagnino fashion.

There’s a powerful connection between performer and character in La Chimera, a perfect showcase for O’Connor’s gifts. But Challengers’ braggadocious Patrick, his buoyant grin and sculpted physique (including, so we’re told, a certain large external organ) throwing chaos into the lives of all around him, feels equally thrilling, presenting O’Connor at his sexiest and most mercurial. Naturally, for our wide-ranging conversation over Zoom, we began there.

Vanity Fair: There’s a real swagger to Patrick in Challengers that felt distinctive from most of your past work. How do you relate to his personality?

Josh O’Connor: I don’t. [Laughs] It is a tricky one. Generally speaking, when I go into any character, I’ll try and find the things that are different about a character. Most actors, we’re all deeply insecure, don’t love ourselves. Even if they portray this idea that they do, most people don’t. So the joy of being an actor is you don’t have to be yourself for a bit, and don’t have to be in your head. Truly, I have no interest in tennis, apart from the fact that I like watching it. The idea of competitiveness, I think I understand. I have an element of that inside me, although not like Patrick in the slightest.

But the idea of flow is something that I really focused on with Patrick. When he’s playing tennis at its best, it’s the back and forth. He has very little interest in just being a tennis player. What’s interesting to him is playing people who can challenge him, and where it’s a give-and-receive. It’s a really tough question because I find it hard to relate to him, which is probably a good thing.

What was it like taking up all that physical space, as he does?

I actually found it really hard. The truth is, Luca had to take me aside after about two weeks and was like, “Josh, you can’t hide. You have to be all out.” I’m not brilliant at that. I like to be in the corner, hiding away a little bit. One thing that I definitely think helps with that: I’d never spent time in a gym in my life. When I went over to Boston to do this film, Luca was like, “We’re in the gym.” We did three or four weeks of: two hours in the morning, tennis; two hours gym; rehearsal every day. I was forced into going to the gym. There was no option. And apart from the fact that I felt amazing, I suddenly had all this regret from when I was a kid—if only I’d discovered the gym earlier, maybe I could have been an athlete.

Between takes, particularly in the main tennis match, Mike and I would be doing laps of the tennis court or doing push-ups or burpees and just properly sweating. Put two actors on basically what is a stage, where there’s sweating and you’re feeling boisterous, and it’s like, if you plant two male actors in that scenario, you’re going to have a bit of swagger. That really helped. It’s not a space I’m necessarily natural with, but I loved it. It felt good.

By the time I’d first encountered the synopsis, I had seen Mike in West Side Story. I fully assumed your roles were reversed.

You’re right. Prior to this project coming together, I met with Justin Kuritzkes, the writer. I’d just moved to New York and it was just a coffee meeting, just to chat and be introduced. This is Justin’s first feature film, so I was sent the script of Challengers two years before and we met. I was like, “This film is amazing. It’s so beautifully written.” And he said, “Which character do you see yourself playing?” I was like, “Obviously Art. Obviously.” So I was exactly the same as you. But that’s the dream. You always want to play stuff that feels further from you. It’s the bigger challenge.

How did it feel watching yourself in that mode?

Nice, I think? I don’t know. [ Laughs] Well, first of all, when I first saw it, I was like, “What happened? Where’s it all gone?” I’ve now learned that you can’t just go to the gym for three months and then stop and it’ll be there forever. So that was a good, late lesson for me to learn.

Talk about the choreography of the intimate scene with you, Mike, and Zendaya. Patrick and Art are seducing Zendaya’s Tashi before things get a bit messier between the three. What was filming that like?

Luca had a very clear idea of what happens on the bed. The idea of me and Mike, with Zendaya in the middle—this idea that it’s kissing, kissing, and then it turns into this three-way kiss—and then suddenly Mike and I are kissing. That was very clear. We all kind of figured out, how are we going to do this? How does this work?

There is an element of improvisation with it. It was fairly organic. We did little things, like, when they’re sitting on the floor and she goes onto the bed, I was up in a flash and not holding back. That came from us knowing our characters well, and knowing the dynamics between the three of us.

You also seem to know your La Chimera character very well. I know you actually sent Alice a fan letter before you were cast. What’s your origin story with her work and how that led here?

It’s a good one. My younger brother is an academic. He teaches in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he’s one of the best people I know in my life. He’s my best friend. He used to go to the cinema and call me, like he was bridging a gap and being like, “I’m interested in what you do,” which he never needs to do, because I do very little to throw myself into what he does. I’d be like, “Cool, what’d you see?” And he’d be like, “This film, Spider-Man. It’s amazing. Really interesting. Guy gets infected by this spider.” [Laughs]

So he’d go to the mainstream films. But then one day he called me and he was like, “I’ve just seen this Italian movie called Happy as Lazzaro, and I think it’s the best film I’ve ever seen.” I went and watched it that night, and I came out and I felt like I found a filmmaker that was making films for just me. So I wrote this letter, saying, “Dear Alice, I love your work. Please can we hang out?” But I had no address. She lives very remote in Italy, in this small community. No one knows where she lives. I’d write letters with a little side note on the envelope, saying, “If anyone knows where she lives, can you just get it to her?”

One day I was in Mexico, working, and I get this phone call from my agent, saying, “Alice Rohrwacher wants to have a Zoom with you.” She never received the letter. It was a pure accident that she reached out to me, not knowing that I was her biggest fan, for La Chimera.

Is that something you felt comfortable doing, reaching out to directors directly like that?

I don’t do it too often. But this movie, to me, is about destiny, and I honestly felt when I watched Alice’s movies, that I was destined to work with her. Which is very arrogant of me to think, but I guess it worked out.

What about her style felt made for you?

Those fairy tales we grow up with as kids—I’d hear them read to me by my parents and I’d be like, “God, imagine if that was actually real.” Alice gives us our modern-day fairy tales, but they are so grounded in real human feeling. La Chimera is about faith and trauma and fear and heartbreak, and all of those things are very real emotions—she puts them into this magically realistic state. I’d never seen that before in someone working today.

So what was it like to act for her? How did you observe her as a filmmaker, and actually realizing what you’re talking about?

It’s something that Alice and I share, which is hard to articulate. It’s an act of faith. We live in a time now where it’s lots of very straightforward characters—he is bad, she is good, or she is bad, he is good. Alice sees past that and she questions everything. I go into that film and I’m like, okay, there’s magic stuff, isn’t there? And she’s like, “No, it’s real. We’re not doing something magical here. This is real stuff.” Generally speaking, that’s how I approach anything anyway. But that feeling of, “Everything is totally real,” is very beautiful.

I don’t think Alice is religious in any organized way, but I would say she’s deeply spiritual and has great faith in the unseen—and why shouldn’t that be as real as the things we can see? And if you go to her house, it’s like an Alice Rohrwacher film. She grows vegetables, she lives completely remotely, everything’s self-sufficient. It’s like an artwork. So she is the real deal. She lives the characters that are in her films.

You’ve said this is the closest you’ve felt to a character. Why is that? What are the clearest parallels between you and Arthur?

One is that Arthur is constantly intrigued. He’s inquisitive. We’d be shooting in these deep forests and woodlands and the mountains, and Alice would be setting up the camera with Hélène Louvart, the cinematographer, and everyone’s getting ready. They’d be like, “Okay, where’s Josh?” I would be climbing up some hill, going through the woods, looking at birds. In part, that was me trying to be Arthur and trying to live as Arthur, but also—that is me. [Laughs] You can’t take me anywhere without losing me because something’s caught my eye and I’ve got distracted by it.

Also there’s a suit he wears in the film, which I now own. It’s such a good suit. Everything he wears in the film, I would wear. I’m not digging up tombs, [but] I am using a lot of my clothes for gardening, so they’re all muddy and torn. And it was a time in my life where I felt like an outsider. I felt a little bit lost in my life, and I didn’t know where I fit in. Arthur represented that for me.

Can you say a bit more about that?

No one really talked about the pandemic, did they? At no point have we sat down and looked at each other and were like, “Are you good? That was fucking insane.” We shut down life, socializing, engaging with other humans. We’re social animals and we couldn’t do it for two, three years. I was living in New York. My family were back in the UK. I wanted to live where I grew up, surrounded by trees and hills. And there was this feeling of losing my anonymity post-The Crown, being stopped, looking like shit and putting your hood up and still being recognized.

You had your initial breakout with The Crown during COVID, too. I know you’re making a film with Paul Mescal right now, and I’ve spoken to him about having a similar experience during Normal People.

Yeah, Paul and I had this very similar experience. It was just bizarre. I wasn’t recognized. We were locked down, stuck in our houses—and when I came out, I was recognized.

I don’t know if you’re done filming The History of Sound with Paul, but if you’re online, you must have seen people getting very excited about the pictures of you that have been snapped from afar.

Which is a miracle. None of us know how they’ve managed that. I’ve seen them, and I remember those days—you’re standing on set and you’re like, “There is no one here.” So fair play to them, they’re very good. [Laughs] But no, it’s going very well. We’re still in the midst of it, but it’s very beautiful. It’s something Paul and I and Oliver Hermanus have been attached to for a long time. We just never found dates that aligned. So it’s a great relief to be making it, and I think it’ll be something very special.

I spotted you in Telluride last year, where I first saw La Chimera. That festival can be quite interesting because everyone’s very focused on Oscars and what’s going to pop, and I remember running into so many people for whom this was a real discovery—it wasn’t a movie they had on the radar. Did you notice that?

I had that same experience. I was there to support Alice since we were on strike. I had been shooting an indie film that had approval from SAG to be shot, and that was in Colorado, so I was around the corner. I didn’t do any press, but I loved it and I had the time of my life. For one thing, you’re absolutely right. There is a real energy of, “Watch this Oscars film, which one’s going to rise, which one’s not.” You’d go into these cafes and you’d hear filmmakers, producers, talking about it! It’s really wild.

I remember going into our screening and Alfonso Cuarón did the introduction for Alice, and there was a retrospective of all her work. Alfonso sat to my right and Chloé Zhao was to my left. Werner Herzog was in the row behind me. All these titans, and afterwards we all went for dinner. We had this little bubble of people just loving the film. It’s a real filmy person film. Alice’s films come from a deep history of Italian filmmakers, and people really respect that.

You’ve talked about your breakout movie, God’s Own Country, getting kind of overshadowed at Sundance when it premiered there. Did this remind you of that?

Yes. That was the first film festival I’d ever been to. The great thing about that film is it was a grower, and people love it. Alice has that. Alice’s films, to me, feel historic. She’s so good at making these movies that will stand the test of time.

Is there a lesson in that? For an actor with your profile, I’d imagine it can be tough for people around you to see a God’s Own Country or even a La Chimera as the thing to prioritize.

I’m always going to want to make movies for people like Alice. That’s always going to be the case. And whilst that doesn’t have to detract from the opportunity of doing something like Challengers, which was an amazing experience, there’s something very deep, and I guess it comes back to the question of: What are you doing it for?

When I was at drama school and training, I wanted to have a theater company touring around the UK doing small plays, because I really believed in regional towns being able to access theater. What I certainly didn’t want was to be rich. Because if I did, then I was an idiot. You don’t become an actor if you want to be wealthy. Putting the money part of it aside, the question is, What entices you? What’s interesting? It has to be something about yourself. It’s finding what is challenging here, and scares me here. What does it say about me?

This interview has been edited and condensed.