28 Years Later’s Alfie Williams: ‘You don’t want to make a fool of yourself in front of Ralph Fiennes’

Rising star Alfie Williams, who returns to the world of ‘28 Years Later’ with ‘The Bone Temple’ - (David Reiss)

The nonsense laws of adolescent film stardom meant that 14-year-old Alfie Williams could be exposed to all kinds of bloody, fleshy zombie splatter on the set of Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later, but not actually see 28 Years Later in cinemas. He learnt this the hard way. Picture yourself in his mortified shoes: you’ve just made your movie debut in one of the most highly anticipated sequels of 2025, you’ve dragged your mates to the Odeon to show off your work, only to be told it’s rated 15 and you can’t get in without an ID.

“I pulled out my phone and started pointing at this photo, like… ‘This is me and Danny Boyle and one of the infected – please let us in’,” Williams recalls. “They were like, ‘that’s cool, but we still need your ID’.” Williams’s face grows crestfallen. “We had to see F1 instead.”