Jeremy William Fredric Smith (born 18 June 1990), known professionally as Jeremy Irvine, is an English actor who made his film debut in the epic war film War Horse (2011). In 2012, he portrayed Philip "Pip" Pirrip in the film adaptation of Great Expectations.
Irvine earned a reputation as a Method actor after he went for two months without food, losing around , and performed his torture scene stunts in The Railway Man (2013). He has since starred in The Woman in Black: Angel of Death (2015), and portrayed Daniel Grigori in the direct-to-video film adaptation of the young adult novel Fallen (2016), as well as young Sam in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018). In 2019, he starred as John Randolph Bentley in the USA Network television series Treadstone.
Early life
Irvine was born Jeremy William Fredric Smith on 18 June 1990 in Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire, where he was raised. His mother, Bridget Smith, is a Liberal Democrat councillor on (and latterly leader of) the South Cambridgeshire District Council, and his father, Chris Smith, is an engineer.
He has two younger brothers, one of whom portrayed a younger version of Irvine's Pip in Great Expectations. All three boys have diabetes. Irvine's stage surname was his grandfather's first name. His great-grandfather, Sir Ralph Lilley Turner, wrote the quotation used as the inscription on London's Gurkha Memorial.
Irvine started acting at age 16. He says his drama teacher inspired him to pursue acting: "I never fitted in, which led me to acting. I was looking for something different." He played Romeo along with other main roles in plays whilst attending Bedford Modern School, followed by a run with the National Youth Theatre.
After completing a one-year foundation course at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), which he attended with Sam Claflin, Irvine spent two years posting his CV through letterboxes to get acting work. He almost gave up acting for good just before he got his big break in War Horse. In an interview with CBS News while promoting Great Expectations, he described this as the lowest point of his life and revealed that he considered taking a different career path: "I'd kind of hit rock bottom and really did think this was stupid and I just wasted three or four years of my life. My dad wanted me to get a job being a welder. At the company he was at, he was an engineer. I was very very close to doing that."
Career
Irvine worked in his local supermarket and also did web design prior to gaining success as an actor. He played Luke in the television series Life Bites and appeared in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2010 production of Dunsinane. He was quoted in Interview Magazine, saying: "My friends all took the mick out of me for Dunsinane saying, 'You're gonna be the tree'. Indeed, in my first scene, I was waving two branches."
In June 2010, he was cast in the lead role of the 2011 Steven Spielberg film War Horse. The film was an adaption of Michael Morpurgo's novel, also entitled War Horse. Spielberg revealed that he had been looking for an unknown actor for War Horse, stating: "I looked at hundreds of actors and newcomers for Albert – mainly newcomers – and nobody had the heart, the spirit or the communication skills that Jeremy had." Irvine was asked to read a section of the War Horse script on camera to check his West Country accent. In an attempt to prepare himself for the role of Albert, Irvine took up weight training and gained approximately 14 pounds of muscle. He also underwent two months of intensive horse riding. He spent so much time recreating the Battle of Somme scene in the film that he ended up contracting trench foot. For his work in the film, he was nominated for the London Film Critics' Choice Award for Young British Performer Of The Year and the Empire Award for Best Male Newcomer.
In April 2011, Variety reported that Irvine had been cast as Pip in a 2012 film adaptation of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. In October 2011, The Hollywood Reporter announced that he was set to play the young Eric Lomax in the film production of The Railway Man. He then starred in the independent film Now Is Good, alongside Dakota Fanning. In February 2013 Variety stated that he had been cast in a film based on the novel The World Made Straight. Also in 2013, he was cast as Daniel Grigori in the film Fallen, based on the young adult series of the same name.