Nathan Stewart-Jarrett makes stillness useful: in Femme, we can see Jules wanting things he cannot admit. His performance is worth the discomfort, even when the script asks us to believe choices that make little sense.
Fi1m perspective
In Femme (2023), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett holds a stare a fraction longer than comfort allows. His Jules wants revenge on Preston, played by George MacKay, but also wants the man himself, and cannot afford to show either. Stewart-Jarrett keeps those competing feelings visible without giving each its own emphatic gesture. We were moved by the scene in which the two sit beside each other playing a video game, because their near-silence allows a closeness that the louder confrontations cannot. His restraint is the strongest reason to see a film whose plotting we do not always believe.
His television breakthrough was Curtis Donovan in Misfits (2009–2012), followed by Ian in Utopia (2013–2014). The later leads in Femme and the heist series Culprits (2023) give him more responsibility for keeping us involved. There is another connection through Belize in Angels in America (2017) and the drag performer Jules: both roles concern how a person presents themselves. On preparing for Femme, he said: “When you put something on, how does it make you feel? How does it make you move?”
Directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping give him a demanding partner in MacKay. Preston's voice lifts and his shoulders drop when he is alone with Jules; Stewart-Jarrett has to keep us watching for changes that are smaller and harder to read. Neither man plays desire as a simple release from fear. For about an hour, that uncertainty makes Femme a tense, involving thriller. The difficulty comes when Jules makes choices the script has not persuaded us he would make, and the actor is left trying to carry them through.
We recommend Down Cemetery Road (2025), where he plays Downey, more readily as a thriller, despite its occasional dawdling. But that series depends chiefly on Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson's prickly exchanges, and tells us less about what Stewart-Jarrett can do. For that, start with Femme, with a firm warning about the brutality of its opening twenty minutes.
Biography
Nathan Stewart-Jarrett is a British actor. He was born on 4 December 1985 in Wandsworth, London, and trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, graduating in 2006.
He is known for playing Curtis Donovan in the E4 series Misfits (2009–2012) and for roles in Utopia (2013), Candyman (2021) and Femme (2023), in which he played Jules. He appears as Downey in the 2025 series Down Cemetery Road.
His stage work includes appearances in The History Boys at the National Theatre and the 2017 revival of Angels in America. For Femme he shared the British Independent Film Award for Best Joint Lead Performance.
