Stephen Graham is winning acclaim once again for his powerful performance in Adolescence. The four part series landed on Netflix last week and explores the harrowing question of “what would you do if your teenage son was accused of murder?”
The show has earned universal acclaim with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes after 40 reviews. The programme has continued Stephen’s incredible start to 2025 as he also won praise for his performance in A Thousand Blows, which landed on Disney last month.
The 51-year-old is now regarded as one of the nation’s finest actors and he explained how his passion for performing was ignited by his dad’s act when he was a child. Stephen spoke about his beginnings on Friday’s edition of The One Show.
He appeared on the sofa alongside legendary actor Robert De Niro, who is returning to screens this week with new crime movie, The Alto Knights. Stephen thanked the Hollywood icon as he explained his love for movies and acting was started when his dad decided to take him to a video rental shop near their family home in Kirkby.
He said: “When I was a kid and I was a little bit younger than [Adolescence co-star] Owen [Cooper], I said to my Dad, I want to do this acting this thing properly.
“He said, ‘right, let’s go’. I got my coat and we went to Quarry Green video shop. We were walking up and down the aisles and he picked three films.
“It was The Godfather, Taxi Driver and The Deer Hunter.” Taxi Driver and The Deer Hunter feature powerhouse performances from Robert De Niro and Stephen said the 1970s classics changed the direction of his life and made him the actor he is today.
He said: “We went home and we watched those three films over a weekend. You were the beginning of my whole love affair with films so thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Stephen debuted on screens in 1990 and has built up an incredible reputation and worked alongside some of the greatest directors of all time such as Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann. However, his latest role in Adolescence may be his most acclaimed yet as he has earned wall to wall praise for his portrayal of Eddie Miller, a dad who is thrown into a horribly unfamiliar situation when his son, Jamie, is accused of an awful crime.
The 51-year-old Scouser has also co-written the project and explained it was inspired by real life tragic events. He told the Radio Times in an interview: “Where it came from, for me, is there was an incident in Liverpool with a young girl, and she was stabbed to death by a young boy. I just thought, why?
“Then there was another young girl in south London who was stabbed to death at a bus stop. And there was this thing up North, where that young girl Brianna Ghey was lured into the park by two teenagers, and they stabbed her. I just thought, what’s going on? What is this that’s happening?”
Stephen has earned rave reviews for the unflinching way he has tackled such a difficult subject. The Telegraph gave it a five-star review and said: “It is a drama so quietly devastating that I won’t forget it for a very long time.” The Guardian gave a similar verdict, with five stars and a glowing description as “the closest thing to TV perfection in decades.”
Rolling Stone critic Alan Sepinwall said: “This is not an easy watch… But in what Adolescence has to say, and in how eloquently and audaciously it says it, it’s also among the very best things — and an early contender for the best thing — you will see on the small screen this year.”