How Connor Swindells became Sex Education’s sleeper success: College dropout who lost his mother aged 7 says he’ll go back to ‘building fences with his brother’ if acting work dries up – as he’s cast in Lockerbie drama

He rose to renown by playing a troubled bully who struggled with his sexuality on Netflix’s Sex Education.

And now, five years later, Connor Swindells has become the hottest rising star to watch, following a series of hit performances across intense dramas including Vigil (2021) and SAS: Rogue Heroes (2022) – both by the BBC – and Autumn de Wilde’s Emma (2020).

He has also recently kicked off working on Lockerbie – a historical thriller about the 1988 bombing.

The 27-year-old’s career is soaring as he continues to prove his acting chops in challenging roles exploring real life tragedies, high-stakes plots and emotionally demanding performances.

He has also shown his range with more lighthearted comedic moments – including a cameo in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie as a Mattel intern. 

Connor has a series of work lined up over the coming years, including parts in Scoop – a Netflix retelling of the scenes behind Prince Andrew’s notorious 2019 interview with Emily Maitlis – historical epic William Tell, and a festive romcom titled Jingle Bell Heist.

But despite his soaring success, the actor from West Sussex wasn’t a natural-born performer.

Albeit describing himself as the ‘runt of the litter’ surrounded by the ‘big, burly, physical, hard-working men’ that are his brothers to the Guardian, Connor started out as an athlete.

As a young man, he put ‘everything’ into boxing – but after his passion for it dried up, he didn’t have ‘anything to fall back on’.

In other reports, Connor has also said he simply didn’t feel like the sport was ‘him’ anymore. 

‘I did terribly in school. It’s all or nothing with me,’ Connor – who dropped out of college aged 17, told Screen Daily in 2017.

Speaking with the Guardian in 2022, the star also explained that he makes sure never to forget his humble beginnings and working class background.

‘I know that, if this was all to go away, I would always have a place working with my brother building fences,’ he explained.

‘During that storm, the crazy one – Eunice was it? – my fence blew down and my brother came up to London, and we were just digging holes in the garden for fence posts again.

‘And I thought, “God, it’s important that I don’t forget this.” As crazy as the industry can get, with these pockets of excitement, it’s easy to get lost in that. And it’s important to remember that you came from just digging holes in the earth.’ 

The actor has been open about his tight-knit family – he has three brothers – and has been equally candid when discussing how his mother Phoebe, who was of Romany traveller heritage, died from bowel cancer.

He was seven when she passed away, but Connor keeps her legacy alive with Instagram posts and videos supporting fundraising initiatives for the illness. 

Last month, he raised more than £20,000 for Bowel Cancer UK as he took part in the Brighton Half Marathon.

‘My mum lost her battle with bowel cancer and now in honour of her fight – I will be doing this run for her and those we all know who have also been through this war,’ he wrote in the JustGiving page.

‘With the bowel cancer stuff, it was always an anxiety of mine because not only had my mum passed away from bowel cancer, but her father had as well as my grandfather,’ he told a Square Mile interview two years ago.

‘So there was always this thing of like, “Oh, maybe it runs in the family.” My way of conquering that was to try and spread awareness.

‘And I think also it was just about trying to make my mum proud.’

Connor’s first role was as the lead in a theatre production of The Trial by Franz Kafka. 

Soon success came along with appearances in Jamestown (2017) and Harlots (2017) – both period dramas – and The Vanishing (2018), a psychological thriller, and VS. (2018); VS., a movie about the underground rap scene in London.

In 2019, he landed the role of Adam Groff in Sex Education – a bully who, after struggling with his sexuality, learns about opening up to the people around him. 

Speaking with GQ in 2022, the star revealed he felt ‘privileged’ to bring the fan-favourite to life and that it’s been ‘almost a fairy tale’.

And in 2021, he also told Attitude magazine how it helped him unpack his own understanding of masculinity. 

‘My mum’s side of the family is really working class. I was talking to a friend about this today, in that your masculinity was shown by your endurance level’, he said.

‘As a labourer, if you could get through a full working day drinking half a bottle of water and [eating] one sandwich, that was considered masculine, which is probably something that not many people are aware of, because that stuff comes from working-class backgrounds, where they’re not wanting to speak about masculinity and the forms that it takes.’

He also opened up about how being in the industry also means there is a pressure to one-up each other – which he tries to ‘catch himself’ on.

Successes continued with yet another hit from Connor – a role as David Stirling in SAS: Rogue Heroes – which depicts the real-life events that were revealed at great length by historian Ben Macintyre in his 2016 book of the same name.

Connor portrayed a real life officer, who was described by Britain’s most senior military officer as ‘quite mad’.

‘It was a hard shoot,’ he told The i. ‘We were in the Moroccan sun for two and a half months… it got up to 49 degrees at one point.

‘At one point we had big ice coolers full of cold wet towels that in between takes we would put on the back of our necks.

‘But then we found out that that was giving people a fever.’

And Connor is travelling back to the past once again with his most recent project – an upcoming drama about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

The show recounts the terrorist attack which killed 259 passengers and crew – including 35 students from the University of Syracuse, along with 11 Lockerbie residents – after a Pan Am Flight 103 which exploded over the town in Dumfries and Galloway, 40 minutes into its flight from London to New York on December 21, 1988.

The TV series in development by Netflix and the BBC also features Jonathan Lee (Who Killed Jando) as the showrunner of the series, who co-wrote the drama alongside Gillian Roger Park (Flotsam). 

Directing the series is Michael Keillor who previously directed and produced the thriller Roadkill, and directed episodes of Line of Duty.

A detailed synopsis of the Netflix/BBC version reads: ”A drama based on the real events surrounding the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the joint Scots-US investigation which sought to bring the perpetrators to justice. 

‘Lockerbie will focus on the investigation into the crash on both sides of the Atlantic and the devastating effect it had on the small town and the families who lost loved ones. 

‘From the initial exhaustive search for evidence on the ground in Scotland, via the US and Malta to the trial at Camp Zeist in 2000, the drama goes right up to the most recent indictment at the end of 2022.’

In an Instagram Story from today, Connor revealed that he is ‘honoured to be telling this story’.