Fionn Whitehead

Whitehead was born on 18 July 1997^[1] in the Richmond area of London to jazz musicians Tim and Linda Whitehead.^[3][4] He was named after Irish folk legend Fionn mac Cumhaill.^[5] Whitehead has two older sisters, Maisie, a performance artist and Hattie, a singer, and one older brother, Sonny. Whitehead was raised "in an artistic household".^[6][7] As a child, he aspired to become either a guitarist or a breakdancer.^[3][8] He began acting at the Orange Tree Theatre aged thirteen.^[9] He then went to Richmond College and entered the National Youth Theatre's summer course.^[9] By 2015, he was an aspiring actor working at a coffee shop in Waterloo, London.^{[citation needed]}

In 2016, Whitehead starred in the British miniseries Him.^[10] In 2017 he acted in a stage performance of Glenn Waldron's Natives.^[11]

He was cast as the protagonist of Christopher Nolan's film Dunkirk, which was released in 2017.^[12] Nolan compared Whitehead to actor Tom Courtenay in his youth.^[10] Weeks after Whitehead finished with Dunkirk, he began work with Richard Eyre's film The Children Act, opposite Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017.^[13] He also starred in one of eight monologues in the television series Queers that aired in 2017.^[14]

In 2018, Whitehead starred in the Black Mirror television series’ interactive stand-alone film Bandersnatch, as lead character Stefan Butler. In 2019, Whitehead appeared in Sebastian Schipper's drama Roads, and the Martin Scorsese produced Port Authority. He later appeared in The Duke and Don’t Tell a Soul (both 2020). He co-stars as Branwell Bronte in the Emily Bronte biopic Emily (2022), and in a television adaptation of Great Expectations (2023), playing the lead role of Pip.

In 2025, he starred in Alex Burunova's debut feature Satisfaction alongside Emma Laird and Zar Amir Ebrahimi, which premiered at the 2025 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival.^[15][16]