Alternate Best Actor 2025: Frank Dillane in Urchin

Frank Dillane did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Mike in Urchin. 

Urchin follows a homeless drug addict. 

Frank Dillane, son of Stephen, plays the role of the homeless addict where we enter the film seemingly as the man is at his lowest where we see him begging for money, loitering inside and fighting with another homeless addict. With such a performance it really is all about whether or not it feels like a put on, which with Dillane it does not. As he delivers from the start the physicality of the man who seems to be in a state of physical unease if not pain at all times. A degree of potential violence in every word he speaks there’s kind of an unpredictability. His eyes and expression filled with the history of a man who has mostly spent his life in this way and along an unpleasant path. There’s rarely any joy and there’s an innate messiness of the man who we see obviously no clarity in his shambling way of even walking. The eventual act of Mike violently attacking a man who has attempted to help and befriend him, is particularly unnerving because within the act there is no hesitation and his immediate apology of “sorry sorry’ isn’t precisely fake however just within Mike’s sorry state of only existing within the idea of the momentary fix. 

When being interrogated for his crime Dillane’s denial of any cause and an explanation that it was the other’s man’s fault is bad lying in his delivery but not in terms of doubt, rather just in terms of it being too exact in his rambling as someone far too comfortable in coming up with bad lies. Something we see followed up closely as he calls someone he knows to say he’s been arrested again and is sentenced for months of prison time. Dillane’s specific delivery of “I’ve been arrested again” speaks to such a history as he says it so easily so calmly, so much of someone who's been through this before and doesn’t even see it as an out of the ordinary experience for him. We jump ahead after he’s cleaned up through time in prison and meets the condition of his parole. Where the familiarity in itself is almost the same as when he was homeless. Dillane’s performance is one defined by the lack of surprise, even when he tries to fashion a kind of hope his expression almost denotes it being as a delusional joke that he is aware of just as much as the person he’s talking to. 

We follow Mike as he has the potential job as a chef at a hotel, where Dillane’s great in the scene of the interview in putting forth the attempt at earnest interest. Where he is able to convey the challenge in the young man who wants to try to do something, even an earnest bit of excitement in it, but a limitation in all his reactions where there’s the barrier of the man from a state of true normalcy. The moment with the owner asking him about his crime, just for his own awareness of the nature of his violence, Dillane’s delivery of the explanation carries so much in the simplicity of it. There is shame as he explains what he did but again there’s also a directness though of someone whose committed desperate asks like that before and may do so again. Where we even see the intensity within the man that speaks to the challenge of his life as he wears the stress of an irate customer so fiercely in his eyes or when he challenges a mediator for the voice he’s using with a sensitivity of someone on this emotional edge even when he’s supposedly “healthy”. 

There are slight comforts as he bonds with his coworkers but even then to describe Dillane as truly calm would be false and he keeps the sense of despondency within the man who is just above the water yet hardly safe. When he meets with his victim in a court ordered session, Dillane’s performance exudes the uncertainty of the man’s mental state where again there is the pain of shame but in no way is there any true understanding of any sense of how to proceed forward with himself, barely getting to look at the man or even acknowledging the mistake to the man. We find then the progression of Mike essentially moving back to the beginning even as he has a romance with a coworker that only leads to him being introduced to drugs again. A pivotal scene in Dillane’s performance is the taking of the drugs that are offered to him casually. Mike refuses them at first then takes them. Dillane doesn’t put a lot on the decision but in doing so shows within it this being a cycle for Mike. He takes the drugs and then he’s just back in it again. What we see is going from the nervous man on the edge of the drugs to becoming the completely lost man we saw at the start of the film. Dillane naturally reverts back to his more disjointed manner and ever increasingly paranoid man until he’s fully back to the start again. It’s a captivating performance with a very specific intention. Which isn't the recovery of the addict, but rather fully the cycle of one. Dillane effectively detailing each step from the dangerous homeless man on the edge of life, to the man straining for recovery, to falling to his demons, to back to that edge again.