Stephen Joseph Graham OBE (born on August 3, 1973) is a British actor and producer. He started his career in 1990. Some of his early famous roles were Tommy in Snatch (2000) and Shang in Gangs of New York (2002). His big break came with his role as Andrew “Combo” Gascoigne in the film This Is England (2006).
On TV, Graham played Combo in This Is England ’86 (2010), This Is England ’88 (2011), and This Is England ’90 (2015). He also starred as Det. Supt. Dave Kelly in Little Boy Blue (2017), John Corbett in Line of Duty (2019), Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire (2010–2014), Eric McNally in Time (2021), and Hayden Stagg in Peaky Blinders (2022).
In movies, he played Scrum in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017), Anthony Provenzano in The Irishman (2019), and Andy Jones in Boiling Point (2021) and its sequel series in 2023. He has won many awards, including a Screen Actors Guild Award, and has been nominated for several British Academy Television and Film Awards. He was also awarded an OBE. In 2020, he and his wife, actress Hannah Walters, started a production company called Matriarch Productions.
Stephen Joseph Graham was born on August 3, 1973, in Kirkby, Lancashire. His grandmother was Swedish, and his grandfather was Jamaican. He has talked about his experience as a light-skinned multiracial person with darker-skinned brothers. He was raised by his mother, a social worker, and his stepfather, a mechanic who later became a pediatric nurse. He also had a good relationship with his biological father. Stephen went to Overdale Primary School in Kirkby, where local actor Andrew Schofield saw him perform and encouraged him to pursue acting. He then went to Ruffwood Comprehensive and later trained at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre and Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance.
Graham is known for playing characters from different parts of Britain, Ireland, and America, and he is praised for his accents. He started his acting career in 1990. Some of his early notable roles include Tommy in Snatch (2000) and Shang in Gangs of New York (2002). His breakthrough role was Andrew “Combo” Gascoigne in This Is England (2006). He played Scrum in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017).
Graham has been nominated for various awards, including an RTS Award and a British Independent Film Award. He has appeared in several music videos and TV shows, such as the BBC Christmas show Lapland, and the video game Call of Duty: Ghosts. In 2019, he played DS John Corbett in Line of Duty. He has also appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs and in the ITV series White House Farm.
In 2021, Graham starred in the film Boiling Point, directed by Philip Barantini. The film was set in a restaurant kitchen and was later made into a series in 2023.
Graham married actress and producer Hannah Walters on June 6, 2008. They have a son and a daughter and live in Ibstock, Leicestershire. Graham is teetotal and has dyslexia. His wife helps him by reading scripts and helping him choose roles. He has struggled with depression and once attempted suicide in his early 20s but survived because the rope broke. He is a lifelong supporter of Liverpool FC and has appeared on Soccer AM.
In 2023, he was awarded the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to drama, which he dedicated to his mother, who passed away in 2022.