James Floyd (actor)

Floyd began his career attending open auditions through the National Youth Theatre in London making his stage debut as one of the chorus in Antigone at Hell’s Mouth performed at the Soho Theatre.[3][11] In 2005, he landed a lead in Totally Practically Naked in My Room on a Wednesday Night performed at the Tristan Bates Theatre.[14] Despite this, he struggled for many years to make ends meet, working as an usher at the Strand Theatre and teaching maths to young students while auditioning.[15][5][16]

In 2007, Floyd starred as a young alcoholic indigenous Canadian in J.B. Priestley’s play The Glass Cage at the Royal & Derngate theatre, directed by Laurie Sansom.[17] And in 2008, he played Ali, a Pakistani student from Detroit in Anna Ziegler’s Dov and Ali at Theatre503.[18][19]

Floyd’s first starring film role was the 2011 coming-of-age drama Everywhere and Nowhere, in which he played a British Pakistani teenager who has a passion for music and DJing.[15][5] The film played to stellar reviews at the Mumbai Film Festival and Dinard Film Festival, and was released in the UK, Europe, and the Middle East.[20]

In 2012, Floyd starred in the 2013 drama My Brother the Devil, a tale of two British-Egyptian brothers growing up on a tough council estate in Hackney, East London.[21] It was Sally El Hosaini’s debut film as a writer/director, and Floyd starred as "Rash", a young drug-dealing boxer with a secret.[22] To prepare for the role, Floyd spent five months living with Hackney gang members and training as a boxer in order to “to get my head around how these guys really think and feel.”[23] After his performance, Time Out reported that Floyd “be on every director’s must-cast list.”[24] Later that year, he signed with United Talent Agency in Los Angeles.[25]

In 2015, Floyd played the lead role of Alex Harks, an American orphan caught up in a private spy ring in the thriller Rogue Agent, executive produced by Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and co-starring Anthony LaPaglia.[26][2] In 2017, Floyd co-starred as a rags-to-riches British Indian businessman in British noir City of Tiny Lights along- side Riz Ahmed, Billie Piper and Cush Jumbo. The film was directed by Pete Travis and produced by Rebecca O’Brien.[27][28]

In 2007 Floyd played the role of footballer Miguel Lopez in the British TV series Dream Team.[29][5] In 2009 he appeared in the TV Film Compulsion (based on Jacobean tragedy The Changeling), alongside Ray Winstone and Parminder Nagra.[30] In 2012 he appeared as a Spanish bullfighter in Seville set crime series Falcón for Sky Atlantic. He portrayed Freddie Mercury in the 2013 BAFTA-winning BBC biopic The Best Possible Taste.[31][32] In 2016, he starred as Ishbaal, prince of the Israelites, in the ABC drama Of Kings and Prophets.[33][34] Since February 2017, Floyd has starred as the Indian doctor Gabriel Varma in the ITV series The Good Karma Hospital.

As of late 2019 Floyd is filming a lead role in new Middle-East set drama Fertile Crescent for Hulu.[35] The 8-episode series was finally also released September 2020 as No Man's Land on Arte-tv in France.[36] Arte-tv in Germany gave it the title Kampf um den Halbmond and released it as Web-stream.

• The Glass Cage at the Royal & Derngate[17]
• Dov & Ali at Theatre503[19]
• Totally Practically Naked... at the Tristan Bates Theatre[14]
• Antigone at Hell's Mouth at the Soho Theatre[3]