Franz Drameh
Franz Drameh is an actor, born 1993.
Franz Alhusaine Drameh was born in Hackney, east London in 1993, and made his film debut as a teenager in Clint Eastwood's Hereafter (2010), credited simply as a teenager. A year later came Attack the Block (2011), where he plays Dennis in the gang of south London kids defending their tower block, and that film is still the best case for what he does. He reads as an actual teenager rather than a stage-school one, unpolished in the right way, and the ensemble only works because all of them do.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014) put him in a much bigger machine as Ford, one of the squad, and demonstrated the limits of that kind of promotion: a British newcomer in an American blockbuster gets a name, a helmet, and not much else. Television has served him considerably better. He played Jefferson Jackson, half of the composite hero Firestorm, across the second season of The Flash and the first three seasons of DC's Legends of Tomorrow from 2016 to 2018, which is the longest sustained run of his career and gave him room for comedy he rarely gets in film. He followed it with Boots in the Apple TV+ series See.
The rest is a working actor's list: Benny in Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen, Tommy in Now Is Good, Bruno Marconi in River, Kingsley in 100 Streets, the modern-dress Dickens riff Twist, and the post-apocalyptic podcast adaptation The Edge of Sleep. Twelve credits here, spread across a decade and a half, with the genre television carrying most of the weight.
Movies (8)
TV (4)
Where to start with Franz Drameh
There is no argument about the opening move. Attack the Block is the film that understands what he is for, it is very funny, and the way that group of kids talk over each other is the reason it has lasted while glossier British genre films from the same years have not.
DC's Legends of Tomorrow is next if you want the version of him with actual screen time. Three seasons is enough to see him relax into a broad, warm comic register that the films almost never asked for.
Edge of Tomorrow is a very good film in which he is a small part, so watch it for the film. See gives him the most physically demanding work he has done, and The Gentlemen is the sharpest of his supporting film turns. Hereafter is only for completists tracking where it started.