Noah Jupe’s life in verse: George Clooney’s protégé, the Hamlet of ‘Hamnet’ and the new Romeo of the West End

Noah Jupe’s (London, 21 years old) performance in Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s film based on Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling novel, may be his shortest role to date, but it’s also the one that has changed everything for the actor. Although the film’s acclaim went to Irish actress Jessie Buckley — who won the Bafta, the Golden Globe, and the Oscar — Jupe, at 19 (his age during filming), didn’t miss the opportunity to unleash his full dramatic potential by playing Prince Hamlet at the end of the film. He’s shown the same enthusiasm for Elizabethan drama on the stage of the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End since March 16, where he’s reciting Shakespeare’s verses in Romeo and Juliet, alongside actress Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) and under the direction of Robert Icke.

Unlike Sink’s Juliet (the actress hadn’t delved deeply into the Bard’s work until she met Icke), Jupe’s experience with Shakespeare’s verses in Hamnet was key to his portrayal of Romeo, as he recently explained in an interview with the trade publication WhatsOnStage. He stated that during his time playing Prince Hamlet, everything “went very fast, I didn’t have much time to prepare,” but he also acknowledged the lasting impact of that performance: “I realized how stimulating it was.”

Following the positive reviews for Zhao’s film — in which he shares the screen with his brother Jacobi Jupe, who at the age of 11 plays Shakespeare’s son — the stage adaptation is now receiving similar acclaim in the West End. The production, described as a “crude comedy” by The Times, seems to rely heavily on the performances of its lead actors, who have managed to save the day: “Sink and Jupe’s emotional sincerity isn’t shared by the rest of the cast,” wrote the theater critic for The New York Times on April 1. Meanwhile, social media has been flooded for weeks with videos of Sink and Jupe posing together, looking dazzling on the Bafta red carpet and, later, at the play’s opening night in the British capital; or greeting the audience with professional seriousness at their first performances — Zendaya and Tom Holland came to see them a few days ago — before disappearing offstage, exchanging knowing and emotional glances.

While it’s too early to know if Noah Jupe will continue tackling Shakespeare, it’s undeniable that his acting career has gained momentum since his work alongside Buckley and Paul Mescal [who plays Shakespeare in Hamnet]. Raised in a home that thrived on film, but where neither his mother, actress Katy Cavanagh, nor his father, filmmaker Chris Jupe, encouraged their children to pursue the industry, the eldest (there’s a third sibling, the middle one, Jemma) wanted to try his luck as an actor early on. Nothing his parents could tell him about the demanding nature of the profession deterred him. As he told Perfect magazine in February of this year, Jupe was obsessed with film: “I watched a film a day, constantly badgering my mum to let me watch films that I was too young for. She showed me Stand by Me when I was seven. She let me watch Goodfellas when I was a bit older. These films would be the source of my imagination for days after.” Eventually, his mother’s agent saw a photograph of the boy and passed it on to a casting director who was looking for a young actor for the adaptation of a work by British novelist Roald Dahl, thus beginning Jupe’s audition cycle.

In 2016, he landed his first major role in the BBC production of The Night Manager, a drama based on the novel by John le Carré. Then came his roles as a child actor. Jupe played the son of Matt Damon and Julianne Moore in Suburbicon (2017), directed by George Clooney with a screenplay by the Coen brothers. He also played the son of John Krasinski and Emily Blunt in the two parts of A Quiet Place (2018 and 2021), directed by Krasinski. Jupe came to this story about a family fighting for survival during an alien invasion on the recommendation of Clooney, who, as Krasinski recounted after a screening, told him: “He’s not just the best child actor you’ll ever work with, he’s the best kid and the best experience you’ll ever have.” Later, he played Shia LaBeouf’s son in Honey Boy (2019), a film inspired by LaBeouf’s complicated relationship with his father, which earned Jupe an Independent Spirit Award nomination and a Critics’ Choice Award nomination. And finally, he played Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant’s son in the hit HBO miniseries The Undoing (2020).

After a period of relative inactivity due to the pandemic, Jupe returned not as the “son of,” but with a very different image: “In that time, I think I really got to mature. When I came back, people were like, ‘Oh, he’s not a kid anymore,’” he said in Flaunt magazine, for which he was the cover star in December 2025. From this latter period comes his role in the Emerson brothers’ biopic, Dreamin’ Wild, in 2022, in which he plays one half of the duo, Donnie; as well as other projects, such as the Apple TV miniseries The Lady in the Lake and the drama & Sons, by Argentine director Pablo Trapero. And finally, Hamnet.

The Jupe Brothers Tour

While Zhao’s film has brought international recognition to the elder Jupe brother, for Jacobi it has been a direct path to Hollywood. In the role of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, his portrayal of a wholesome boy from the 16th-century English countryside and his tragic end first delighted audiences and then plunged them into sorrow. This mix of emotions manifested as great affection in the real world, when the two brothers, Noah and Jacobi, embarked on the film’s promotional tour together and basked in the acclaim of the awards season (96 in total for Hamnet, from 302 nominations). At the final event, the Oscars ceremony at the Dolby Theatre, where Jacobi did get to see his on-screen mother receive an award for Best Actress, his older brother was unable to attend: he was premiering Romeo and Juliet in London.

There’s still a bit of that child actor who takes to the stage with Sadie Sink — until June 20 — to play Romeo, dressed in black and wearing a serious expression. He retains a certain shyness, that attitude only possessed by those who, even after achieving early success, approach each project as the most daunting challenge: “I love to step into other people’s shoes and wear them for a little bit to see what that teaches me about myself. It can be very good for your heart to empathize with other people. And I guess that’s my job, which is pretty awesome [...] I like to put myself outside my comfort zone, that’s when you find something special,” he said in his interview with Flaunt.

“Life is imitating art for Sink’s younger co-star,” continued the review of Romeo and Juliet in The New York Times, before noting the actor’s “endearingly doe-eyed, callow goodness” on the Harold Pinter stage.

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