‘Every role I do, I’m going to be a Black man first’: David Jonsson

David Jonsson disappears into roles — Rye Lane, Industry and Alien: Romulus among them — and now stars as heroin addict Taylor in the ultraviolent prison drama Wasteman. He calls it 'the most personal role I’ve done.' The film picked up five Bifa nominations including best lead performance, and Jonsson lost 1.8 stone to achieve Taylor’s 'wasted' physique, saying he was 'mawga, properly skinny.' He is the youngest of four, born to working-class parents — his mother a police officer, his father an IT engineer at Heathrow — and raised in a Creole household with ties to Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Caribbean.

His parents separated when he was 11, an experience he says 'changes you.' Expelled from school for fighting, he discovered acting through school plays and the National Youth Theatre, won a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and later earned a place at Rada.

Wasteman was his first film audition, initially for a different role, and the project stalled for years before reaching the screen.

United Kingdom, Heathrow

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