“This really is my first everything,” admits Arthur Conti. “Everything is so new to me.”
The young British actor isn’t exaggerating. When we meet at Soho House in London, he’s sporting the sort of wide-eyed expression of someone trying to come to terms with a couple of life-changing weeks that might be difficult to put into words. For starters, Conti recently got back from the Venice Film Festival premiere of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” alongside director Tim Burton and fellow castmembers Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe.
“And also Sigourney Weaver’s there, and Isabelle Huppert and Taylor Russell and all these people watching me on a very big screen… and then there’s all this clapping … it’s hard to believe,” he says.
The disbelief is understandable. Because not only did Venice mark Conti’s “first ever film festival,” but the gothic comedy sequel — a project that has been in development for considerably longer than Conti’s 20 years of age — was, quite literally, his “first ever film.”
But it’s a solid-sized and potentially breakout role for someone who’s only previous on-screen experience was playing a queen’s page in the first season of “House of the Dragon” (“one episode, one scene, two lines,” he notes).
In “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the floppy-haired and charming Londoner has far more to say and do. As Jeremy Frazier, he’s not just a potential love interest to Ortega’s lead Astrid Deetz, but a character with a key twist that is crucial to the story. As he notes, one article claimed that his role was the film’s “secret weapon” (although he was told “by everyone” to avoid reading reviews, he admits he “can’t not read stuff … thankfully, everything’s been really nice.”).
Getting such an enviable role in the much-hyped return from a cult filmmaker alongside one of Hollywood’s newest leading ladies (and a Gen-Z it girl) sounds like it all came about frightening easily, perhaps adding to Conti’s sense of bewilderment at his current situation.
In around March of 2023, he sent in a self-tape, then two weeks later he was invited to do a script read over Zoom with Ortega and Burton, which he did from his agent’s office. Although Conti didn’t expect to hear anything — if at all — for some time, just two hours after the video call he was told the part was his (something he notes occurred on April Fool’s Day, leading him to initially think it was a practical joke). “So … yeah!” he says, still unable to really explain the remarkable turn of events.
But it wasn’t all (insanely) smooth sailing. Most of Conti’s scenes — mostly interiors — were shot at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden just outside London (coincidentally where he also shot “House of the Dragon”). But the exteriors filmed in Boston, and he headed over in mid 2023 the day before the actor’s strike ground everything to a halt. “I got there and basically turned around and flew home, although I did have a nice day to myself exploring Boston,” he says. Five months later, in November, he was back.
“My experience filming it was really lovely,” he says of the film. Burton, he claims, is “very funny” and someone who, despite creating an “environment where everything felt very laid back,” gets things done very efficiently and with very few takes (“Whereas I’d be like, ‘Can I do that another 400 times, please?’”). Both Keaton and Ryder — who he shares a couple of scenes with — were “so sweet and caring … Winona, I can’t tell you how lovely she is, Jenna and I just felt really looked after.”
But the vast majority of Conti’s screen time is with Ortega, who he says, despite her stratospheric rise to stardom, is still “incredibly humble” and for “someone that young who has had that amount of fame, is so approachable and down to earth.”
When anyone experiences the sort of remarkable career debut like Conti’s, eyes will often turn to any form of insider leg-up they might have been afforded along the way as a way of explanation. In an industry awash in so-called “nepo babies,” it’s perhaps unfair to drag him into the mix, but it would be a lie to say he doesn’t come from a family of well-known performers.
Firstly, his mother happens to be Nina Conti, the British comedian and ventriloquist (whose few major acting roles include the upcoming “Spinal Tap” sequel).
Was there a push for him to follow the same comedic path? “I did once do a five-minute stand-up set, so I have technically done it, but I don’t think it’s for me … although maybe I will give it another go,” he says. As for ventriloquism, he admits that having grown up around the somewhat unusual form of entertainment, he probably knows it a “little better than your average person.”
Then there’s his grandfather, the Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated Tom Conti, who at 82 years old is still busy on screen, recently appearing as Albert Einstein in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” (and also as a judge in 2017’s “Paddington 2,” the premiere for which a young, cherub-faced Arthur Conti attended — “if you look it up, there are some horrific photos of me!”). But the elder Conti, Arthur says, is the sort of person who will “very much just tell people not to be an actor.”
But Conti claims that, for all his family’s achievements, he actually caught the performing bug at school, where despite supposedly being too young he was allowed to audition to be in a production of the musical “The Drowsy Chaperone” and wound up playing the best man. “It was me and a load of older kids and it was so much fun — so that was probably a nice little ego boost, and that was it,” he says.
But Conti, for all his family credentials, then subsequently tried and failed to get into two of London’s most reputable acting institutions — RADA and Guildhall — not that it seems to have remotely mattered. In almost quick-fire succession came “House of the Dragon” (although he’d originally gone for a “bigger part”), followed by a major role in the play “Winner’s Curse” at London’s Park Theatre, and then “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
Soon after Conti was cast in the “Beetlejuice” sequel, he signed with WME, who he says are now hard at work finding him new projects. “Yeah, it’s all very exciting, they’ve been great,” he says, again seemingly in shock at how any of this to be.
And there’s another first that has come with his somewhat dramatic few weeks in the spotlight — fashion.
“I know nothing about fashion,” he admits (when we meet, he’s sporting a white baggy shirt under a scruffy jumper). “But I’m having to learn. No, having to learn sounds like I’m not enjoying it, which isn’t true. But I really don’t know much about it.” Part of learning is remembering what he’s been given to wear.
On the opening night of Venice he wore a Celine suit, with a cream roll-neck top and jewelry from Cartier (all of which he’s sadly had to give back). The evening after we meet, he’s heading to an Armani event as part of London Fashion Week. “I don’t know anything about, but I like it, I like wearing nice, fun clothes,” he notes.
Should Conti’s upward trajectory continue in anywhere near the sort of form it has over the last year, it shouldn’t be too long before much of this world — from fashion to agents to film festivals to red carpets to interviews at Soho House — is all second nature and nothing to even raise an eyebrow over. But until then, this young Brit is busy figuring out — and happily so — what he may later describe as his breakout moment alongside everything that comes with it.
“This massive thing has happened and it’s hard to believe,” he says. “But I’m very excited about it.”
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