Josh Bolt
Josh Bolt is an actor, born 1994.
Josh Bolt got his break the way a lot of Liverpool actors do, in a film about Liverpool. He was still in his teens when he played Pete Shotton in Nowhere Boy, the friend who happened to be in the room while John Lennon assembled a band, which is a thankless assignment: the audience is watching the other boy.
What followed was a two-track career, and both tracks were television. On one side, comedy, as Rob in Benidorm, where the joke is usually at the character's expense and the actor has to stay likeable anyway. On the other, Last Tango in Halifax, a series built on people talking honestly in kitchens, where he played Raff. That is the work that shows what he can do, because those scripts run long unbroken scenes and there is nowhere in them to hide.
Since then the transatlantic productions have found him: Dunbar in George Clooney's Catch-22, Lt. Pappy Lewis in Tom Hanks' Masters of the Air, DS Archie Dent in Ellis. He is still best known at home for Raff and Rob. The war series changed who else is watching.
Movies (2)
TV (6)
Where to start with Josh Bolt
Begin with Last Tango in Halifax. It is the only thing here that gives him proper room, and Raff is the sort of role that fails invisibly if the actor is even slightly false: a young man out of his depth and not admitting it. Then Nowhere Boy for the reverse test, a small part in a crowded film where his job is mostly to react.
If you want the American-facing version, Masters of the Air is the better of the two war series for him, though Catch-22 hands Dunbar the stranger material. Benidorm is a different animal entirely and a fair chunk of the British public knows him from nothing else. A Good Woman Is Hard to Find is the grimmest thing in the list and well worth it if you like your thrillers bleak, and Ellis is the newest, a procedural where he plays the sergeant doing the actual legwork.