Jude Law

Jude Law (birthname: David Jude Heyworth Law) may be now known by younger viewers as Albus Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) and The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018), but for older moviegoers, he is one of the most recognizable and respected British film actors of his time. Distinguished by a cutting intelligence, piercing blue eyes, and the hints of a bad boy that continue to imbue his performances as he reaches his 50s, Law is one of those actors whom many assume has won an Oscar—yet, has not (so far). 

Trained in musical theater starting in 1987, Jude Law was making West End theater appearances no less than five years later and earned a nomination for an outstanding newcomer in the Laurence Olivier Awards. He received a Tony nomination in 1995 for his turn in the Jean Cocteau adaptation, Indiscretions, with Kathleen Turner and Cynthia Nixon.

By the late 1990s, Law shot to movie stardom on the combined weight of Stephen Fry’s Wilde (1997), Clint Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), Andrew Niccol’s science fiction drama, Gattaca (1997), and his fine Oscar-nominated turn opposite Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999).

Law’s stratospheric rise turned him into a star associated with serious entertainment, including the Steven Spielberg/Stanley Kubrick sci-fi epic, A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Sam Mendes’ Depression-era drama with Tom Hanks, The Road to Perdition (2002), the WW2 action epic, Enemy at the Gates (2001), and a second movie with director Anthony Minghella, Cold Mountain (2003), with Nicole Kidman, which earned Law the Best Actor Oscar nomination.

Law shifted into somewhat lighter fare at this point, including comedies like Holiday (2006), and a pair of projects in which he re-created roles originated by Michael Caine, with whom Law bears fascinating comparisons: Alfie (2004) and Sleuth (2007), adapted by the great British playwright, Harold Pinter. The work of another playwright, Patrick Marber—Closer (2004), directed by Mike Nichols, with Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen—provided Law with the kind of dangerous and caustic character with which he seems to thrive as an actor.

Jude Law’s career hasn’t exactly slowed down, but his recent work has taken a different register, in such commercial vehicles as Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes and its sequel, Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows (2011), with Law as Watson to Robert Downey, Jr.’s Holmes, in which acting takes a backseat to special effects.

By far his most intriguing performance of late has been in Paolo Sorrentino’s subversive and strange HBO limited series, The Young Pope (2016), a role which he then reprised in The New Pope (2020). These, as well as his physically demanding performance in HBO’s surreal The Third Day (2020), suggests how streaming narrative “mega-features” afford the kind of interesting roles for an actor of Law’s talents that feature films now seldom do.

This is measured by how Law is now opting for either reprise of familiar characters or the big, broad, fantasy roles of Dumbledore in the Fantastic Beasts series, Captain Hook in Peter Pan & Wendy (2022), and a reprise of his Watson in the third (as yet untitled) Sherlock Holmes feature. And nothing gets bigger and broader than the role Law is slated to tackle next: Henry VIII, in Karim Aïnouz’s drama, Firebrand, with Alicia Vikander.