White Lotus actor Leo Woodall lands a starring role in film adaptation of A Waiter In Paris

Rising British star Leo Woodall is up for a ‘Breakthrough’ award at the South Bank Sky Arts Awards this Sunday — and I hear that the White Lotus actor, pictured, has just landed another big starring film role.

Charismatic Leo, 26, is to head the cast of an adaptation of the best-selling memoir A Waiter In Paris.

The casting was the talk of Cannes this spring and Leo is being likened by some to a young Jude Law — or even (whisper it) Robert Redford.

There’s been buzz around the book for some time. It features a young Englishman — called simply ‘L’Anglais’ — who is dumped by his snooty French girlfriend and dreams of being an authentic Parisian waiter.

He finds the reality of being poor in the world’s most romantic city hard.

Rights to the book were snapped up by film critic- turned-producer Jason Solomons and I hear that Whit Stillman, best-known for The Last Days Of Disco, will direct.

A graduate of the ArtsEd school, Woodall played Essex lad Jack in White Lotus, on holiday with his ‘uncle’ Quentin, played by Tom Hollander.

In an interview he said of the role: ‘When I did my audition I watched four videos of Joey Essex beforehand. 

‘While filming they all had no idea what I was saying half the time. All the Americans in the cast . . . Mike [White, the showrunner], the Italians . . . no one really knew what I was saying.

‘The moment I thought I might have gone too far was when I said ‘dos Jägermeister, dos Red Bull’ when speaking Spanish to the Italian barmen . . . but it’s still in there, so obviously it wasn’t too much.’

Woodall will next be seen in a Netflix TV adaptation of the David Nicholls book One Day opposite Ambika Mod.

Mod was lauded for her performance as trainee doctor Shruti Acharya in the BBC One drama This Is Going to Hurt, starring Ben Whishaw.

The new series was filmed last summer and will be out later this year. (The book was also turned into a feature film in 2011, starring Anne Hathaway.)

Leo’s acting debut was in 2019 in a short film called Man Down and the same year he also starred in an episode of Holby City.

In 2021 he starred in Cherry, directed by the Russo brothers and opposite Spider-Man star Tom Holland.

He also played Adrian Ivashkov in two episodes of the Universal series The Vampire Academy in 2022.

His star is continuing to rise as he was cast in as the co-lead Dexter Mayhew in the BBC adaptation of David Nicholls’ seminal novel One Day, while filming The White Lotus.

The actor will also be starring in Nomad and in TV series Citadel, opposite Priyanka Chopra and Stanley Tucci.