He's come a long way since the thigh boots and suspenders of Kinky Boots (2005) and, since his breakout role just five years later in David Michod's meaty crime drama, Animal Kingdom, Australian actor Joel Edgerton’s hardly been off screens big and small.
Challenging, often gritty, roles are his trademark, from the terrifying The Gift (2015), which he also directed, to Master Gardener (2022) in cinemas and, of late, he's found just as much success on TV in The Underground Railroad (2021) and, most recently of all, on Apple TV Plus's Dark Matter.
One of the streamer’s biggest hits the year, the dramatization of Blake Crouch's novel (he also serves as the series’ showrunner) ended its first series on a knife edge, with viewers desperate to know more. Edgerton stars alongside Jennifer Connelly as physicist Jason Desson who is abducted and transplanted into an alternative version of his life. Trying to return to his reality amid a myriad of personal landscapes, he finds himself on a journey to save his family from the most terrifying of enemies: himself.
A second season has just been confirmed and, although little else has been announced, Dark Matter should be back on our screens some time between autumn of next year and spring 2026. The plot is currently under wraps, but both Edgerton and Connelly are expected to return.
In the meantime, one of the actor's best performances is streaming on Netflix in the UK right now (in the US it's available to rent via Prime Video and other services). Released in 2016 and directed by Jeff Nichols, Loving is based on the true story of interracial couple Richard and Mildred Loving, who were sentenced to jail in 1958 for getting married.
The court then banned them from living in their home state of Virginia and it took nearly ten years for them to overturn the ruling. In a powerful but restrained performance, Edgerton plays the husband, a man of few words and with a strength he doesn’t wear on his sleeve. Ruth Negga, recently seen on Apple TV Plus's Presumed Innocent, plays his wife.
Two more of Edgerton’s films are on Netflix in both the US and UK. Tough crime movie The Stranger (2022) and emotional domestic drama, Boy Erased (2018), which he also directed, are both ready and waiting on the streamer. We have a best Netflix movies guides for more films to enjoy.
