When he was growing up in east London in the Nineties, David Jonsson would be told stories by his mother about the youngsters she was seeing each day. She was a police officer for the Met, and would come home, sigh and look intently at her son. “I don’t know which way some of these boys are going,” she’d tell him. “Please, don’t be like that.” Jonsson, his voice so soft and careful that he seems 32 going on 60, knew what his mother was doing. “She was full of love and care and empathy, but also frustration. She was trying to help.”
Today, Jonsson is one of Britain’s busiest young actors – the star of the romantic comedy Rye Lane and the Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk, and last year the recipient of the Bafta Rising Star Award. But he knows a path was laid out for him that wasn’t as rosy. “Honestly, a life of prison and addiction was just one step away from me.”
