In Finding Emily, Spike Fearn plays a new kind of British rom-com lead. Adding his own Northern charm to the canon, the Midlands actor plays a drifting twenty-something Manchester lad chasing a feeling – and a girl – having met ‘the one’ on the dancefloor, only to botch it by scribbling down her number a digit short. It’s own goal romance – sentiment tangled up with self-sabotage – and Fearn perfectly leans into both, scuffing the polish off the traditional arc to give us something looser, messier, and totally relatable to anyone who’s ever fumbled their way through love. His next roles pull him in different directions, first in Alice Birch’s dramatic directorial debut, Sweetsick, alongside Cate Blanchett, and then as a high school sports prodigy in Gavin O’Connor’s Running. An icon of the rom-com genre, Academy Award and Golden Globe-winner Renée Zellweger remains the gold standard of awkward, bungled romance (and here’s the link: Finding Emily comes from the same production house as Bridget Jones’s Diary). From one hapless romantic to another –words of guidance don’t come much sounder than this.

Renée Zellweger: Spike, where are you?
Spike Fearn: I’m in London. I’m going to do hot yoga later.

RZ [laughs] Tell me about that, who got you into yoga?
SF: I’ve never been before, my friend is kind of dragging me into doing it. I’ve started doing all different forms of fitness – I was doing gymnastics last week. My friend’s really good at it and he was like, “Do you want to come to hot yoga?” I didn’t really know what it was, and now that I’ve Googled it I kind of don’t want to go. [laughs] My problem with things like that is that I watch around the room too much and think everyone’s watching me. Especially in gymnastics, you’ve got all these kids doing 60 flips, and well, I can’t do that. So then you’re trying to do a round-off, and you just look like you’ve never walked before. [both laugh]

RZ: You’ve got to dance when you have the chance, right?
SF: Yeah!

RZ: I admire you for getting out there and giving it a shot. Did you try spring floor?
SF: Yeah, the springs messed my legs up though. My bones were hurting for a little bit. I should probably just focus on running, but I can’t keep running and running!

RZ: I don’t think hot yoga is on the insurance form of the prohibited activities, I think you’ll be good. [laughs]
SF: I normally skip the insurance form part actually… [both laugh]

RZ: In fact, the hot yoga might help out with the funky bones from the round-off.
SF: That’s what I’m hoping.

RZ: It’s so interesting that you have this inner dialogue going on with yourself, and then you’re an actor. [laughs]
SF: Yeah, that’s the thing, that inner dialogue is hard to get rid of when you’re so in your head about certain things.

RZ: So what have you been up to, besides yoga and gymnastics?
SF: Just kind of hanging around, getting ready for [what’s] next. Every time I go into a job, I have to find a new way of prep, because I wasn’t really taught at a specific place. I like trying to find different ways of getting into things – I find that really fun.

RZ: I did a little bit of a nose around because I haven’t known you for very long, and we haven’t had the chance to go to the pub yet and hear all the stories. So this is a really fun opportunity to pick your brain. When we met, you did talk a little bit about your process and about why you wanted to act, but I’d be really curious to know [more]. When you start [acting], there’s this moment where you have an idea about what it is, but how did you come to learn what the job entails and what it’s about for you? Because it’s different for everybody, right? I’m guessing that there’s an evolution in it for you as well, because it’s pretty new still.
SF: Every time I go into a job, I always feel like I haven’t done enough. But then in my mind, I feel like I can’t do any more. There’s nothing else I can do. I feel completely ready, but on the first day I always get really scared. I’m in this weird stage of, I don’t know what enough is – and what’s not enough. I enjoy jumping around and playing and everything feeling real. If I can find realism then I’m happy. I think I’ve always had a good indicator of how to read text and understand how it’s meant to be played out – the emotions that someone would feel in that certain scenario. I’ve had that from a kid and being a people watcher. I can look at people and understand how they feel.

“I feel like [my Finding Emily] character was so perfect for me. There was something really interesting about him, he was like the kids that I would look up to.”

RZ: Empathy is a big part of it. Empathy, observation and listening, because then you start to understand what people aren’t saying in the moment and what they really mean, depending on what they’re presenting. That comes into play a lot. It’s funny, because you can’t really know all of it until you get there on the day – a lot of it shows up in the process, with the other people you’re working with. It really made me smile when we were talking about when you were really young – which is funny to say, because you are really young! – because a lot of the time people go into acting because they have an idea about the lifestyle, or how exciting it might be to be part of the film industry. But it sounds like you came at it from a different perspective, a different motivation for wanting to tell stories.
SF: Yeah, I never wanted to be an actor as a child. It wasn’t until I started watching [certain] performances – probably The Panic in Needle Park and The Basketball Diaries – that I was like, “Yeah!” They move me in a certain way. I just watched the French New Wave film Breathless last night with [Jean-Paul] Belmondo and it was incredible. I want to do films like that. That’s what I really like about going to the movies, I’ll always come out being really inspired. It’s like fuel every time I go, I always chase for things that I think are going to fulfil me – I keep falling in love.

RZ: I understand what you’re saying completely. I love to go to the cinema and it’s so interesting the references of films that you love, because those are films that are treasured, character-driven pieces. I remember when I got to Los Angeles – as a small town person, when you first move to Los Angeles, it’s a different experience – I saw City Slickers and A River Runs Through It, and both of them made me sure that I was doing what I loved. When you said, never have done enough, do you mean in terms of preparation?
SF: I guess that’s the thing with prep. If you’re prepping anything, you’re thinking about something so much that your mind will automatically go to a place of, “I don’t know if I’ve done enough.” I keep trying to tell myself I have done enough, and I’m supposed to be here, and I feel completely ready, but there’s always going to be nerves. I’m still a very thin book, but that’s also what excites me, everything I’m going to learn through working with different directors and actors. I’m going to try and absorb everything, and hopefully when I’m a little bit older, I can be like, “It’s not a book, it’s a novel.” And I’ll have loads of stuff that I can pull from.

RZ: I think you’ll have volumes, my darling. Your curiosity is wonderful and it’s going to be one of your superpowers as you go forward. I have to ask you, what are your favourite things about making films that you didn’t expect?
SF: I wanted to be an actor from, like, sixteen or seventeen, and then at eighteen I got an opportunity that was really great, it was a small indie movie called Sweetheart, with so much love. I was like, “Oh, this is a really cool movie where everyone here is throwing so much heart into it. It’s really small, and we’re all living in the same place.” Then I got an opportunity to go and do one day on The Batman. And that was a different experience, there was like, a rain machine, and they’d built all this stuff. I remember looking up thinking, “OK, there’s two sides of this.” [laughs]

RZ: Budget!
SF: In terms of things that I’ve learned – you just have to go for it. I’m quite a nervous person, I’m quite shy, really. I can’t remember who said it, but someone was telling me, “Look, you get one go at this. If you mess it up, you’re just going to be kicking yourself.” So I just give it everything I have at the time.

“That’s what I really like about going to the movies, I’ll always come out being really inspired… I always chase for things that I think are going to fulfil me – I keep falling in love.”

RZ: That’s great.
SF: Something I’ve just got my head around is the lighting. I was taught at The Television Workshop in Nottingham, and they teach you this form of naturalism through improv, script reading and hiding words within lines. It’s really, really fun. But then when you get on set, it’s like you’re trying to be really honest, and really real, and humanising the person as much as possible. You’re doing it, and you think it’s really great, and you feel really good about it, but the lights… [Renée laughs] The lights and the cameras are in different places. I just did a film with Cate Blanchett [Sweetsick], and she said to me, “That’s really great, but your lights are coming from here, so you’re not really getting it.” Then I would see how she watches the cameras, and how she would understand what the camera is going to do, because she already knows exactly what she’s going to do. Because the camera is just as important as you.

RZ: It’s an amazing alchemy. Every person on that set is telling the story from an emotional and visual perspective. It’s really funny, because one day, you’re going to be sitting up on stage, and people will be raising their hands asking you questions, and you’re going to be so surprised at all the things that you’ve forgotten that you came to understand about the job. [By then] you hit your mark and you don’t think about it, but on the first day when someone’s talking about marks, you have no idea. And you know how the camera’s moving, and what that means for opportunity in storytelling. All those things. It’s incredible what you absorb, and it becomes part of who you are in the experience.
SF: People always say, “It must ruin films for you, because you know how they work.” I think it actually makes it more exciting. When you go to watch a film, you’re like “That shot’s amazing. I wonder how they did that?” When you’ve made a film and then you watch it, it might be completely different to how you remember doing it, and you’re like, “That’s so interesting that they made that choice.”

RZ: It’s such a beautiful medium, isn’t it? You just get swept up in it and disappear in the journey. I never, ever get tired of it. Finding Emily was such a different challenge for you, to find the comedic moments and the flow of the love story – it’s so charming. It’s one of those things where I imagine, with the gymnastics, yoga and self- criticism going on inside your mind, you may have felt really vulnerable being exposed in that way, finding those lighter moments and falling in love in front of everybody.
SF: I feel like that character was so perfect for me. There was something really interesting about him, he was like the kids that I would look up to. Also, the Midlands [where Spike is from] is so heavily inspired by Manchester, I always wanted to play someone from Manchester, and there really was that excitement. I’ve learnt to play the guitar a little bit [for the film], and people will hear me sing – which no one had ever heard [both laugh]. I’d definitely jump at the opportunity to do more comedic roles, because it’s like, you go to work and you laugh, and you’re happy all day, instead of putting your mind in a really dark place and going home and not being able to sleep. When people laugh at you, it’s great. [Finding Emily] was such a good environment – I guess making the movie was how the movie feels. It was just such a peaceful, sweet time being there, and I really enjoyed it. It was a good experience being a guy who’s chasing love.

“I’ve always had a good indicator of… the emotions that someone would feel in that certain scenario. I’ve had that from a kid and being a people watcher. I can look at people and understand how they feel.”

RZ: You’re going off to make a film now with Gavin [O’Connor], right?
SF: Yeah. I’m going next month and go straight into a running boot camp. I’m very excited to learn how to be a runner.

RZ: Good luck, because I hear they did that on Warrior, his movie with my writer friend, Anthony [Tambakis]. Did you see it? Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton.
SF: It’s pretty amazing. I watched Miracle [too]. I’m trying to absorb everything,

RZ: You’re going to have a great time, I can’t wait to see what you get up to. Where do you see yourself in a few years time, or are you not thinking that far down the road?
SF: I do think about it sometimes. The exciting thing is, I don’t know what’s going to come and I don’t know what opportunities people are going to allow me to do, or allow me to fight for, anyway. I love the hunger and the fight in it as well. Getting the opportunity, getting an audition, then working for it, and then booking it. I think that whatever is thrown my way, I’ll be able to smartly be like, “OK, I’ll do this.” Or, “This might be good for me right now.” Even with the promotional work, how I want to be seen in a certain way off screen as well.

RZ: That’s really interesting to hear from a guy who has come up in the era of social media, where everything is really out there, everybody’s seen. That you’re trying to navigate whether or not it aligns with who you are.
SF: I have a really weird relationship with social media. Sometimes I think I want to be as far away as possible from it. But then sometimes I think, “Well, this is how the world is now.” It changes all the time. I just think about how I want to be away from the work, and how I want to live. Whether I just want a sheep farm in the countryside and to sell wool to an independent wool maker – this idea came to mind a year ago. Then maybe next year I’ll find a nice little place in Italy, go there and get some small glasses and read.

RZ [laughs] You know, what? Do it all. Do the sheep farm and the small glasses.
SF: That’s the exciting thing, you can do it all.

Interview originally published in The HERO Summer Zine 2026.
grooming BRADY LEA at A-FRAME AGENCY
fashion assistant BELLA MAGEE