When some enterprising director gets around to making Pete Doherty: The Movie, Frank Dillane won’t need to audition. With his black leather jacket, bed-head and baby face, this could be the youthful Libertines frontman seated before me next to a potted plant in an east London cafe. Unlike the young Doherty, however, the actor’s drug of choice is a flat white. And he isn’t hell-bent on sabotaging his career. Not any more.
After playing the haunted, drug-addicted Nick Clark in four seasons of the zombie TV spin-off Fear the Walking Dead, Dillane, now 34, fled to Berlin for two years and turned his back on fame. A glance at some of the video interviews he did to promote the show is enough to explain why: he looks at best fidgety, at worst bored and resentful.
