Actor Ariyon Bakare is enjoying the spotlight now, but there have been dark times along the way. He talks about being homeless and losing his stepmother… And why he is now relishing playing a ‘baddie’ in His Dark Materials
Across a table in the bar of a Paddington hotel, conversation turns to home. “I lived all over London,” says the actor Ariyon Bakare. “I grew up in Leytonstone, but I also kind of grew up in Hackney…” We’re sitting next to arched windows, from which we can see the afternoon traffic. Some days, Bakare sits out in the city like this and just watches people move through their days, mimicking their movements, how they pull their shoulders back, how they stroke their faces.
At 49, and after 25 years in the trade, Bakare is finally in the limelight. The back-to-back successes of his leading performances in the 2017 sci-fi blockbuster Life and the fantasy TV series His Dark Materials have pushed him into the mainstream consciousness and garnered him international recognition.
