TWO BRITISH ACTORS ARE BECOMING KNOWN FOR THEIR UNCANNY ABILITIES TO CHANNEL THE PEOPLE OF A BYGONE AGE. WE MEET THE NORTHMAN’S KATE DICKIE AND RALPH INESON.
WORDS AND INTERVIEWS BY DAVID JENKINS ILLUSTRATION BY LAURÈNE BOGLIO
Considering the sheer amount of people who work in motion pictures – the immense breadth of the talent pool – it seems strange that you’d regularly find yourself on set with the same people over and over again. Ralph Ineson, a baritone-voiced powerhouse from the West Riding, who shot to infamy for his ability to throw a copper kettle over a pub in seminal TV sitcom, The Office, has locked into a tidy career niche where he plays knights, marauders, messengers and rustic patriarchs in bucolic period fantasies. Kate Dickie, an intense Scottish character actor flung onto the world stage as the lead in Andrea Arnold’s Ballardian erotic thriller from 2006, Red Road, is now an habitual scene-stealer in stories set in other worlds and other times.
They also both happen to crop up in a lot of the same titles, starting with Robert Eggers’ 2015 folk horror parable, The Witch, as a Puritan couple who, along with their family and a demonic black goat, are banished to the edge of some ominous woodlands. They shared credit space rather than screen time in TV behemoth Game of Thrones, with Dickie in particular leaving a deep mark as the violently insane Lysa Arryn. They were able to wave hello once more in David Lowery’s 2021 film, The Green Knight, where Ineson plays the macabre title character, the pronounced contours of his unique face still visible under deep layers of prosthetics and makeup.
“I just love Ralph to bits.” says Dickie. “He is my best buddy. We first met on the set of The Witch and Ralph, me, Anya Taylor-Joy and the kids, we all bonded very deeply. We all stayed in contact. I saw him again recently, and his performance in The Witch is just incredible. That bit where he’s crying and eating… it just breaks me every time I watch it. I just love to see how well he’s doing.” The feeling is mutual, and both believe this eternal bond was formed on the set of The Witch, which Ineson sees as an important stepping-stone in his career. “Since I did The Witch with Rob, that gave me a real boost in my career. It brought me to a wider audience, as it were. I often have a choice of parts, which is something that I didn’t have for 20 years in my career.” Choice brings its own worries as well: “You don't want to turn down the best Oscar-winning part that there’s ever been cause you’ve got a bit of a hangover. That’s the dark side of choice.”
Dickie and Ineson are clearly cut from similar cloth in terms of t
