Connor Jessup

The Toronto Lab

Connor Jessup doesn't fit the mold of the child actor who seeks the industry's constant validation. His career began in Toronto at just eleven years old, but his mind was always on editing and cinematography. In 2011, he became known worldwide with Falling Skies. That sci-fi series ran for five seasons and served as a film school paid for by the production company of Steven Spielberg.

While his castmates rested in their trailers, he would watch the crew set up the lights. Jessup has always preferred to understand the craft rather than feed his ego. In 2012 he starred in Blackbird, and that's where Canadian critics noticed a different kind of weight in his work. The role of a teenager accused of planning a school shooting demanded a coldness that few eighteen-year-old actors manage to convey.

The filmmaker won out over the actor.

In 2015, he founded his own production company, Big and Quiet Pictures, together with Canadian producer Ashley Shields-Muir. He didn't want to wait for interesting scripts to arrive, so he decided to write them himself. That same year he directed the short film Lira and made it clear that his interest in experimental cinema outweighed his ambition for red carpets. His directorial debut was shot on a minimal budget with a crew reduced to the essentials.

The Obsession With Creative Control

But the real breakthrough came with Closet Monster in 2015. The film won the award for Best Canadian Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival and put him on the map of international independent cinema. In this coming-of-age story, Jessup plays a young man dealing with childhood trauma and his own sexuality. The film barely got wide commercial distribution, but its prestige on the festival circuit was absolute.

Silence was her best tool.

In 2016, he appeared in the anthology series American Crime, where he played Taylor Blaine. In this production, he had to work on his body language to portray a victim of sexual assault in a hostile high school setting. It was a raw, stripped-down performance that earned him the respect of American critics. But Jessup was still obsessed with directing, and in 2017 he presented Lira at various international festivals.

In 2020, Locke & Key premiered on Netflix, and his face appeared on billboards around the world. Playing Tyler Locke gave him the financial stability he needed to keep funding his own personal projects. Jessup signed a contract for three full seasons that finished filming in 2022. During breaks from the shoot in Toronto, he would read essays on film theory and edit his own material.

The industry was watching him, but he was looking the other way.

In 2019, he made his relationship with fellow actor Miles Heizer public. He did so with a naturalness that avoided sensationalist headlines from the society press. In 2022 he took part in the film The Listener under the direction of Steve Buscemi, and in 2023 he joined the cast of Strange Darling. This last project was shot entirely on 35mm to preserve the grainy, organic look that Jessup defended in several technical interviews.

The short film Night Flight, shot in 2019, runs exactly 13 minutes.