Jack O’Connell reveals the reason why his Hollywood career never took off like fellow Skins star and Oscar-winner Daniel Kaluuya

Jack O’Connell has revealed he believes his accent is the reason he has not found more success in Hollywood. 

The British actor, 33, has starred numerous American productions but has yet to break into the mainstream alongside the likes of fellow Skins star and now Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya.

Jack acted opposite George Clooney and Julie Roberts in 2016’s Money Monster, directed by Jodie Foster and was hand-picked by Angelina Jolie to lead the cast of her 2014 flick Unbroken. 

But he told The Sunday Times: ‘The Derby twang is not marketable, I think Americans think I’m a hillbilly, that I support Trump, which I wouldn’t. 

‘But there we go, there’s f*** all I can do about it’.

Back home in the UK Jack appeared on the West End stage with Sienna Miller, starred in Netflix’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and BBC drama SAS Rogue Heroes.

He will also soon be seen in the controversial Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black as the singer’s estranged husband Blake Fielder-Civil.

Jack joined teen drama Skins as James Cook in 2009 for it’s third season with a new set of actors replacing the original cast that included Daniel, Nicholas Hoult and Dev Patel.

London born Daniel was catapulted to fame in 2017’s Get Out before going on to win Best Supporting Actor for Judas and the Black Messiah in 2021.

Meanwhile Nicholas, from Berkshire, was cast as Beast in Matthew Vaughn’s X Men First Class and will next be seen as Lex Luthor in much anticipated Superman reboot. 

While Dev from Harrow was nominated for a BAFTA for Slumdog Millionaire and recently starred and directed in action movie Monkey Man.  

Elsewhere in the interview Jack defended Back To Black, describing it as a ‘celebration’ of the later singer Amy Winehouse’s life. 

The actor plays the star’s husband Blake Fielder-Civil in the upcoming film alongside Industry’s Marisa Abela, 27, as Amy – who tragically died from alcohol poisoning aged just 27 in 2011. 

Back To Black, which has been endorsed by Amy’s father Mitch (played by Eddie Marsan) has drawn outrage from the singer’s pals who slammed it for it’s ‘ghoulish’ depictions of the star’s drug addiction and also filming her funeral.

But speaking about whether it was ‘too soon’ to make the biopic Jack defended the filmmakers asked what an ‘acceptable timescale’ would be. 

Saying:  ‘Put it like this: if we were trying to portray her in any form of negative light, then that might be a valid point and I can understand one or two people pre-empting that. But if you talk to Sam [Taylor-Johnson, director] we’re not even calling this a biopic, it’s a celebration’.