PETER GADIOT

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With an approach to acting that is rooted in the desire to transform, Peter Gadiot looks for scripts that push well beyond the bounds of one’s self. “Ultimately, there are two things that are the most important to the actor, and that’s the script and the imagination,” he says on a sweltering-hot New York afternoon in late June. “If you have those two things, you don’t really need anything else.”

When talking about his work, Gadiot uses words like “varied” and “extreme.” And when speaking of character arcs, his emphasis is on that which exists in between the lines. “Sometimes the danger is just trying to play the superficial, physical actions of what you are doing, but it’s always good to get that fully fleshed out, living and breathing soul of a character. And that is very rarely on the page,” he says.

It is not surprising then to learn that in his relatively short career, the versatile Brit has landed roles as diverse as any actor could wish to play in a lifetime. However, as Gadiot tells, it isn’t always easy to maintain such multiplicity. “The reality is that you’re not given many opportunities to do that because people like to cast a type—although McConaughey has given hope to everyone,” he says with a laugh.

Well-versed in the art of film, television, and theater, and with an ever-growing list of credits to his name, it seems unlikely Gadiot will fall victim to such typecasts. A crossover performer who occupies the same lettered territory as contemporaries like Daniel Radcliffe, Neil Patrick Harris, and Julia Stiles, Gadiot is fast emerging as a triple threat on the world stage.

When we meet, Gadiot is fresh off the back of a six-week run as Petruchio, the swaggering, hyper-masculine lead in the Shakespeare Theatre production The Taming of the Shrew in Washington, DC. He has also very recently appeared in the anticipated première of Queen of the South, the USA Network’s new summer hit, in which he plays James Valdez, a drug-runner whom Gadiot describes as “a good guy who does bad things by necessity not by choice.” The only similarity, it would seem, is Gadiot himself. And for the thirty-year-old, classically trained actor, that is just fine.

Fittingly, it is such disparate roles as these that have long fueled Gadiot’s appetite for his craft. The more unfamiliar and undefined, the better. For him, it is the heady sense of abandonment that exists by surrendering to the lens of someone else’s making that had the then-seventeen-year-old hooked right from the start. “I was self-conscious as a teenager and I didn’t think I could forget myself and commit to acting but actually, I found it very liberating as you’re given the freedom to not be you,” he recalls. “It was like a drug. That was it. I never looked back.”

Four years at the prestigious Drama Centre London were to follow, as were numerous stage productions before Gadiot made the leap across to film and television, developing a list of credits that include ABC’s Once Upon a Time in Wonderland and cult British series Fresh Meat. He also caught the attention of directing heavyweights Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, who cast him opposite French actress Léa Seydoux in a short series of 2013 films for Prada’s Candy perfume line.

Like many vocations, Gadiot’s path to acting came by way of a few false starts. “I grew up playing soccer and I wanted to be a professional football player, as every young boy in England does,” he says. Having played at a high standard, a series of injuries and a self-professed attitude problem—“I was once let go from a club because they thought I was a bad influence on the other academy students”—prevented Gadiot from pursuing the sport further. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I went to college and studied chemistry and politics, and I really loved it. I even considered a career in politics,” he says.

But the moment that truly set Gadiot’s life on course was a fortuitous encounter with a neighbor. “We moved to a new house when I was seventeen and my next-door neighbor was auditioning for drama school and I thought I’d give it a try, so I signed up to a six-week course,” he recalls. “Basically I was like a duck to water. I absolutely adored it.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, with various projects in the works, including a stint behind the camera to write and direct the yet-to-be-released short film 12-17, Gadiot continues to draw on his theater background as a primary vehicle for evolution. “Once you’ve grown up in the theater and you’ve had the experience of how amazing it is to explore these great, literary works and to be in the rehearsal room, then you can never forget that,” he says. “You never don’t want to do it.”

As for the future, Gadiot has plans to once again step take up the camera himself, perhaps even bringing to life a film trilogy he’s been ruminating on since his days at drama school. But for the moment, that can wait. In front of the lens or at his second home on the stage is where you will find him. Just don’t ask him to choose between them: “It’s like breakfast, lunch, and dinner—I need all three in my day.”

Queen of the South continues on Thursdays on USA.