Jack O’Connell’s life off-screen: from school sweetheart girlfriend to troubled youth

Jack O’Connell is back on our screens in the second season of the BBC’s hit war drama, SAS Rogue Heroes. The 34-year-old, who plays Army officer Paddy Mayne in the series, is known for his roles in Skins, Ferrari and more recently, Back to Black.  

While he’s been a familiar face on our screens since 2006, when he appeared in the BAFTA-winning film This Is England, how much do you know about his life off-camera? Here’s all you need to know…

Jack’s upbringing in Derby and troubled youth

Jack hails from Derby, where he and his little sister Megan grew up with an Irish father who worked on the railways and an English mother who worked for airline British Midland and later became his manager.

Sharing an insight into his upbringing in a recent interview with Hollywood Authentic, Jack said: “I just grew up there, playing football and doing all the normal stuff. My mum and dad worked every hour of the day. My mum had two jobs and still had bailiffs coming around. I remember the bailiffs coming and nabbing our TV. I was halfway through watching Pingu, and they [expletive] nabbed the TV.” 

He continued: “I remember my mum having to be really crafty with how she’d get food on the table and whatnot. And that was despite my dad working his arse off. He worked himself into the ground.”

When Jack was 18, his father died of pancreatic cancer – a kind of loss the actor said “you never get over”. “You just cope,” he told the publication. “I had 18 years with a fine, fine man. I know lads that never even had a day with theirs. So it is what it is. But he got to see the start of where I was getting to with work.”

© Getty

Opening up about his troubled youth, Jack revealed that he “got into a lot of trouble” and almost ended up in prison when he was a teen. 

“When I was younger, I got into a lot of trouble and was made to feel guilty for a long time,” he told The Guardian in 2014. “I was in and out of court, and then I had a young offender’s referral order for a year. And that was at the time when I was trying to be an actor at the Royal Court. 

‘I was in real court the day I was starting a play called Scarborough at the Royal Court in London – waiting to find out if I was getting a custodial sentence.”

Jack’s acting career

While Jack had aspirations of becoming a professional footballer, a knee injury forced him to give up that dream. Thankfully, he found his passion for acting as a teenager and went on to train at the Television Workshop in Nottingham. He won his first screen role on the BBC medical drama Doctors when he was just 15 and from there, landed parts in The Bill, This is England and Skins. 

© Kevin Winter

Since then, Jack’s career has gone from strength to strength, with the actor winning roles in major Hollywood films, such as Angelina Jolie’s 2014 Unbroken and the biographical sports drama, Ferrari. More recently, he played Amy Winehouse’s husband Blake Fielder-Civil in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic, Back to Black. 

Jack’s home life with his girlfriend 

When he’s not busy filming his next hit TV show or film, Jack can be found at home in north east London, where he lives with his hairstylist girlfriend, Imogen Coates. 

The pair have known each other since their school days in Derby. Speaking about his love life during an interview with The Times in April, Jack described his relationship as “healthy”. “I’m a class boyfriend,” he said. “But if I have a shave I don’t always rinse the sink. That’s minging, isn’t it? There’s no excuse. But we’re in a healthy relationship. I’m content and grateful for my work and life right now.“

The actor, who moved to the UK capital back in 2014, likes to spend his downtime walking Bob – a dog he met while acting in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in the West End in 2018 and who he often borrows from his owner for walks between film shoots. 

© Back to Black official trailer / YouTube

Jack rekindled his friendship with Bob after bumping into him while filming Back to Black in Camden. “I was shooting at the Dublin Castle pub in all my Blake garb,” he told Hollywood Authentic. “And who should walk past? It’d been about a year-and-a-half or two years. Bless him, he remembered.”