After training at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, actor, writer and producer Jack Holden landed the lead in the West End play War Horse in 2011. His television acting credits include BBC One drama Marriages and Ten Percent, the English-language remake of Call My Agent!. As a playwright, his debut play Cruise, a one man show set during the Aids crisis, premiered in the West End in 2021 and was nominated for an Olivier award for best new play. Along with director Ed Stambollouian, he co-wrote Kenrex: A True Crime Thriller, which opened in Sheffield in 2024 then transferred to Southwark Playhouse and will run at the Other Palace from 3 December. Holden has now adapted Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Line of Beauty for the stage; it will be at the Almeida, north London, from 21 October - 29 November.

I went to see this a few weeks ago and thought it was brilliant. It's a smart opening choice for Nadia Fall's new tenure as artistic director at the Young Vic because it was a radical play for its time, and actually still quite radical. It’s about a lodger with a dark past who comes to stay in a guest house, then goes on to seduce all the family who run the place. The production is beautifully retro in its sensibility, and the central performances from Tamzin Outhwaite and others are brilliant and muscular. It's all in the round, so the whole thing is a wonderfully voyeuristic experience, which is exactly what Joe Orton would have wanted.

I’m going to see this tonight and I’m very excited. I love Paul Thomas Anderson films, and I love Leonardo DiCaprio, although he’s something of a divisive figure these days, but he'll always be close to my heart because of Titanic. The film is about a revolutionary who's living off grid, then his daughter goes missing and he has to track her down. I find those fundamental stories of “Get back home” or “Get family member back” endlessly compelling. It's got a fantastically long running time, but I’m into long-form stuff at the moment. Things are getting nervously shorter and shorter because we’re all scared about people's attention spans. But I think in theatre and film, length isn't actually the issue.

I love the Gorillaz’s tonal palette – there's something quite melancholy about it. The song On Melancholy Hill, from their second album Plastic Beach, is obviously the ultimate melancholy Gorillaz sound. I'm super excited for a new album from them, out next year: each album is always exploring a bunch of different musical genres, and I like the eclectic nature of that. The Manifesto, one of the new tracks, featuring Trueno and Proof, combines electronic and rap and world music. I think there's a lot of Eastern influence on this album. I really like the way they smash genres together – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Lately I reread this book – I prefer it to the film because it’s slightly more elliptical and the ending feels a bit truer and more poetic. It’s such a short read, but it’s so full of detail – characters breeze in for a page and then you never hear from them again, but they're somehow seared into your brain. I'm always intrigued by Truman Capote as a character himself. He’s not the narrator here, but you sort of assume it is him. I can only imagine him wandering around New York, meeting all these people. He must have met a Holly Golightly in his time. I suppose I'm actually more fascinated by the writer than the thing itself.

I live in South London, and this is one of my local favourites, right by the station. I went there for a "welcome home" lunch a few weekends ago, and it was just delightful. It’s seasonal British food with an extensive wine list – not just natural wines, which I think everyone's got a bit carried away with, but also classic, good, aged wines. There's a Scandi minimalism to the space but it's very relaxed: casual yet contemporary. I had an incredible piece of duck breast with plum sauce, then we all shared the different desserts. It was exceptional.