Masters of the Air star Anthony Boyle: I'm very lucky says Belfast actor (2025)

From west Belfast to the Pentagon via Hollywood, the last decade of Anthony Boyle's life has been eventful - to say the least.

You might recognise the Belfast-born actor from the TV series Derry Girls. Or the film Tolkien. Or perhaps his Olivier-award winning performance in the West End smash hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

But, arguably, it's Boyle's latest role in the Apple TV+ war epic Masters of the Air that has really catapulted him into the spotlight.

The drama is executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and is a spiritual follow up from their hit series Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

It stars Boyle as narrator and navigator Lt Harry Crosby.

And the significance of it was brought home to him when he gathered with his castmates at the Pentagon to meet World War Two veterans - some of whom knew Lt Crosby.

"I shook the men's hands and it was just - I'm not one for sentimentality - but it was very, very special to sit there and look at these men who saved the world," he told BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme.

"It was a very special moment," he said - and one that might never have happened had it not been for several twists of fate which changed the direction of his young life.

School was never for him, Boyle said - a sentiment his teachers appeared to agree with when they expelled him at 16.

"I was always very creative and having to sit in a room and follow orders just did not suit me at all, so I think it was probably good that they kicked me out because I was probably distracting the class," he said.

Out of school, the teenager's attention began to turn to acting.

"I'd go home and Google 'Belfast acting auditions' when I was about 16 and I would show up to the most random stuff.

"I remember doing a ghost tour outside the big Tesco in town with a black bag over my head, and I'd say: 'I'm the ghost of Henry Joy McCracken.'

"It's been very much a ground-up sort of thing."

His luck began to change when he was taken under the wing of the Lyric Theatre's head of creative learning, Philip Crawford, who ran "a sort of actor training" course called Drama Studio.

"Through [Philip] I got cast in a play at the Lyric and a woman called Patricia Logue saw me in that play.

"She was like, we want you to come to this drama school, The Royal Welsh [College of Music and Drama]."

Assured he could attend regardless of his expulsion from school, Boyle made the trip to Cardiff and the rest, as they say, is history.

Two years in, he signed a three-year contract to play Scorpious Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

An Olivier Award and a Tony nomination followed, putting Boyle on the radar of "some really significant people, both directors and actors".

"Winning the Olivier gets you into rooms that you wouldn't have got into before… that really set me up so well," he said.

While hard work may breed luck, he said he's been on the receiving end of a tremendous amount of the latter.

"There are so many actors who aren't in my position, not because of talent but because of luck and it's good to practice some gratitude about that… I was very lucky to get those opportunities."

Boyle's next venture, period drama Manhunt, will begin airing when Masters of the Air concludes.

While he plays a war hero in one, he plays a villain in the latter, taking on the role of Abraham Lincoln's killer, John Wilkes Booth.

"I grew the moustache out and had the cowboy boots and just really got into it. It was a lot of fun," he said. "He was a bad guy."

But while Boyle's star may be ascendant, he said he has no trouble keeping his feet on the ground - and the people of west Belfast will be very quick to pull him back into line if he does "start acting the maggot".

When asked how he keeps it real, he has a simple answer: "A pint of Guinness and a packet of crisps - that's all it takes."