Wonderland caught up with the BIFA nominee to discuss his creative upbringing, finding his truest self amid the chaos of the Big Smoke, and his standout debut lead role in Mikko Mäkelä’s Sundance hit Sebastian.
Ruaridh Mollica and I are chatting about our shared fascination with film photography over a slightly sticky table tucked away in the backroom of a pub on East London’s Columbia Road. It’s 2pm on the first sunny afternoon in weeks, the epitome of British autumn, and he’s definitely the more seasoned of the two of us on the subject. “It’s what keeps me sane outside of the acting industry,” he begins, then pauses, his thoughts interrupted by a sudden burst of laughter. The atmosphere has been hijacked by a surprisingly pleasant, but comical, trombone-heavy Christmas playlist blaring from the speakers. “And the music went ‘boom, boom, boom’,” he quips, speaking closely into the recorder as though helping me infuse the piece with onomatopoeia for added colour. Whether it worked, that’s up to you to decide. We share a laugh, recalibrate, and press on. “My dad used to be a photographer. I always liked the idea of it, but I’d never shot film before. When I was 18, I went to Istanbul and took my granddad’s old film camera,” he recalls. “And I loved getting those pictures back.”
Now, at 25, it’s in London — the city he’s called home since 2022 — where the Scottish-Italian actor finds his canvas for analog experiments. From Hackney to Soho, wandering along the banks of the Thames, he seeks escapism in the beauty of the everyday and the ever-tempting possibility of spotting “an old couple hugging.” “Sometimes, your life becomes work, and the industry becomes your life,” he reflects. “I like to step away from that, go for a walk, take pictures, and forget that the industry even exists.” Is it an effective method? “Not really,” he chuckles. “You’ll be walking along thinking, ‘God, I’ve got that audition coming up, and this thing’s coming up. Oh, and the BIFA’s coming up.”
It’s easy to imagine how Mollica’s mind might struggle to downshift to the pace of everyday thoughts, considering the year he’s had. His first lead role, in Finnish-British writer-director Mikko Mäkelä’s Sebastian, premiered at Sundance in January to critical acclaim — and after a successful yet exhausting festival circuit, he’s now nominated for a Breakthrough Performance at the 2024 British Independent Film Awards. “2024 will forever have a pin in it, or like a big star with arrows pointing to it,” he says. “This was the year, the culmination of all the hard work, and when my life changed career-wise.”
For the past ten years, he’s been flirting with the film industry, a love affair that began when he was just 12, growing up near the port town of Leith, Edinburgh, and was sparked by a couple of friends joining a youth theatre centre. “I went there just for fun,” he recalls. “And there was a casting director who asked if I could ride horses, and I said yes.” That simple question led him to his first role in the Scottish crime drama Case Histories, where he shared the screen with industry veterans Jason Isaacs and Mark Bonnar, who “kinda taught [him] everything,” he says.
In front of the camera, Mollica is a natural. He’s poised, charming — more Chalamet than Elordi — a fit that feels like a no-brainer, him and the big screen. But his relationship with the industry wasn’t one of high-speed momentum, nor was it planned, really. Despite catching the acting bug while riding that horse in Case Histories, he was a slow burner, treating acting as a side gig for most of his life, juggling small roles throughout high school and university. He studied computer science, which makes perfect sense to him, given he was “the nerdy kid, building [his] own computers and playing video games” type. “I don’t think I ever thought of acting as a job growing up,” he reflects. “But at uni, maybe in the back of my head, I thought, ‘if the right thing comes along, maybe I’ll choose it,’ but I don’t think I’d really confronted that thought. I remember talking to exes, being like, ‘maybe I’ll do acting, but I’m just too scared.’ So, I convinced myself I loved computer science.”
In his final year, he was cast in a short film called Too Rough, “a three-day shoot set in Glasgow about this boy who brings his boyfriend home to a dysfunctional, homophobic household,” he recalls. The only prep for the role was ensuring he’d completed his dissertation early enough to afford time off from his studies. “I just turned up and read the lines,” he says. “I hadn’t worked in so long, and it was just amazing. That felt like making art, it completely brought me back to it.” He knew what he had to do — despite being accepted into a Master’s program at University College London to study Cybersecurity, he turned down the offer (“which felt like the most badass shit I’ve ever done in my life”) and moved to London in 2022 to give acting a real shot.
Between working part-time jobs, endless auditions, his first “big-ish role” in BBC’s crime drama Witness No. 3, and Too Rough premiering at South by Southwest and winning a Scottish BAFTA, Mollica was slowly getting to know Mikko Mäkelä’s Sebastian. The role came his way like any other, through an email that led to a self-tape, followed by a Zoom call with the director. In Mäkelä’s world, Ruaridh Mollica portrays Max, a young novelist who, in an attempt to understand the nuances and connect intimately with the lives of male sex workers for a story, ends up becoming one himself, under the pseudonym Sebastian.
The simplicity of his initial encounter with the role, especially considering how deeply entangled his life now feels with this character, is fascinating. But that’s because, since landing the part, Mollica and Mäkelä worked together for almost a year to achieve a complete synchrony between actor and subject matter. “Before we started shooting Sebastian, I’d never really connected with a character like that. Or been the lead of a character study,” he reflects. “My whole first year in London revolved around preparing for this role. Everyone I met during that time knew me as someone preparing for this character, and every interaction I had felt like, ‘Oh, I’m preparing for this role.’ I got to the point where I didn’t know if I should read a book as Ruaridh or read it as Max. Our lives became so unbelievably blurred.”
During this process, Mikko Mäkelä rewrote the character to make this connection even more tangible — Max was now from Edinburgh, having recently moved to London. His literary heroes, including Bret Easton Ellis, Philip Roth, and Zadie Smith, became Max’s own. As Max navigated the layers of his queerness, Mollica was also coming to terms with how much of his own life he was ready to share with the public. “I didn’t have any queer role models growing up, especially bisexual role models. But when I moved to London, and felt the anonymity of the city, I realised I could wear whatever I wanted, do whatever I wanted, and no one would say anything,” he says. “[Sebastian] was an opportunity for me to come out publicly. I’m really proud of this film, and I’m really proud of who I am. If you are queer and you’re portraying a queer role, then I wanted to be able to champion that.”
Sebastian is a film that takes audiences on a wild ride, offering a raw exploration of the fine line between carnal temptation, desire, and the emotional boundaries of coming-of-age. Ruaridh Mollica is outstanding in the lead role, delivering a performance that reflects both his magnetic, courageous presence — which I can’t help but sense on the other side of the table — and the sensibility and depth of an actor fully immersed in his role. “I could feel, kind of, before we started shooting, that I might be different after this film,” he reflects. “My whole life in London had the character and the film kind of stitched into it. When it was done, I genuinely was like, ‘what do I do now? What is my purpose now?’ It felt like going through a huge breakup.”
Fortunately, it’s often after heartbreak that the most rewarding opportunities arise. For Mollica, the pivotal moment has placed him among the most exciting new talents to emerge from the UK’s creative incubator. Next up, audiences can catch him in HBO’s The Franchise, Vladimir de Fontenay’s Sukkwan Island, and the short film Joe, adapted from the Polari Prize-winning debut novel The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom. From slowburner to rising star, Mollica is now firmly in full throttle — and it’s clear that this is just the beginning.
