Emmy winner Owen Cooper's life away from Adolescence role as he makes history

Adolescence star Owen Cooper made history last night by becoming the youngest male winner of an acting Emmy Award. He was awarded Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series at the ceremony.

It was just one of the awards given to the Netflix show at the prestigious event in Los Angeles. Owen, 15, won the accolade for his performance as Jamie Miller, the character at the centre of four-part series Adolescence who is arrested on suspicion of murdering a girl at his school.

Upon accepting the award, Owen shared that he wouldn't have expected to be at the Emmys when he began taking drama classes. He said: "Honestly, when I started these drama classes a couple years back, I didn't expect to be even in the United States, never mind here. But I think tonight proves that if you listen and you focus and you step out of your comfort zone, you can achieve anything in life."

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Adolescence marked the first professional role for Owen, from Cheshire, who has trained at the Drama Mob theatre group. Ahead of the show's release earlier this year, he opened up about his experience as well as family life.

The series was filmed in the summer of 2024 and he was 14 at the time. Owen is supported in his career by his family, which includes his parents Noreen, who is a carer, and Andy, who works in IT. He has two older brothers, Ollie, 20, and Connor, 30, who are both electricians. Noreen is said to have made an hour-long round trip every week to Didsbury, Manchester, to take Owen to drama classes.

Initially believing he would get the role of Jamie's friend Ryan, Owen admitted he was shocked when he found out his first major role would be as a main character. On how he balanced filming with his school work, he said: "We shot some of it during the summer but not all of it.

"So some of the time I was on my summer break from school. And other times I’d have a tutor on set and I had a great relationship with the teacher so that was fine. In between shots, I’d go straight to work with the tutor."

The Liverpool FC fan said he is nothing like his character, who is not a huge fan of sport, adding: "I'd say he's a lot different to me because stuff that happens online I don't really get involved with. I don't think Jamie's sporty at all, which is the complete opposite to me. I play football for the school team and I play outside of school, too."

It was filmed in Yorkshire and Owen said the location was one of the aspects he found most relatable to his home life. "The fact that the story was set in the North and it’s a Northern story was the thing that I found most relatable, because I’m also from the North," he said. "That side of it felt very real to me."

His parents were on set with him throughout filming, as he divulged: "They would swap over sometimes because at the time my mum had an operation so she had to stay home for most of episode three. So my dad would come. And he'd have cans (headphones) on in the back watching it and I'd always go up to him afterwards. So, yeah, my dad would be there most of the time."

When he was little Owen wanted to be a footballer, but in Year 7 he started going to drama lessons and fell in love with acting. He joked: "Both of my brothers are electricians and my mum's a carer. My dad works in IT. So, I've no clue where it comes from."

Adolescence is on Netflix.

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