Harris Dickinson on why he took break from acting to direct 'Urchin'

Harris Dickinson took a break from acting just when his career was taking off.

Right after the filming of Babygirl was completed, Harris turned his attention toward making his directorial debut with Urchin.

“I didn’t work as an actor for a year,” he explained to Variety. “I had no choice. There was no way I was going to be able to shoot this and work on other things. Of course, things came up, but I was just committed to this.”

His complete dedication to Urchin has brought the director to the Cannes Film Festival, where the film competes in the Un Certain Regard sidebar.

Other actors making their directorial debuts with films selected for Cannes are Scarlett Johansson, who helmed Eleanor the Great, and Kristen Stewart, who directed The Chronology of Water.

While Harris doesn’t have extensive acting experience like Stewart and Johansson, he understands their decision to turn to directing.

“It makes a lot of sense to me that they’ve decided to make films,” he said. “Especially when you look at the work they’ve done — it’s clear that they have a real interest in cinema.”

Urchin stars Frank Dillane as a young man wandering the streets of London and struggling with breaking habits that keep him stuck. The film’s topic is close to Harris’ heart as he’s seen people go through similar struggles in real life.

“I’ve people close to me struggle with quite cyclical behavior and I became interested in the psychology of that, and it made me want to tell a focused character study with someone at the center dealing with that,” Harris Dickinson shared. “I wanted to tackle it in a nuanced way and bring humanity to that journey.”