Nico Mirallegro

Nico Cristian Mirallegro (born 26 January 1991) is an English actor.

Mirallegro was born on 26 January 1991 in Heywood, Greater Manchester.

His Italian father is from Sicily and his Irish mother, Maureen McLaughlin, is from Malin Head.

He briefly attended a boarding school outside the UK, at which he was lonely and felt out of place.

He also attended Siddal Moor Sports College in Heywood and the Manchester School of Acting.

His parents are separated and his father lives in Spain, with Mirallegro having moved there as a teenager to live with him for a time.

He is conversational in Italian and Spanish.

Mirallegro says that he "fell into" acting in his mid-teens after following his sister Claudia to improv classes.

At one of his first acting classes, he was "so scared [he] had to get one of the other lads to say [his] lines".

He is best known for his roles as Barry "Newt" Newton in the soap opera Hollyoaks (2007–2010), Finn Nelson in My Mad Fat Diary (2013–2015), Joe Middleton in The Village (2013), and Johnjo O'Shea in Common (2014).

Mirallegro's first professional acting role came in 2007, after he was cast as emo teenager Newt in the long-running British soap opera Hollyoaks.

Although he voluntarily left Hollyoaks after two years at age 18 to follow other acting projects, he was grateful for the opportunity to appear on the show: "Hollyoaks is where I learnt a lot of the craft, being in front of a camera six days a week. That's certainly an experience you don't get in drama school."

When filming for Hollyoaks, Mirallegro was also playing Cam Spencer in LOL, a web series which explored sex, drugs, and relationships.

Mirallegro's first film, the short film Six Minutes of Freedom, was shot in 2009.

He starred as a troubled teenager training to be a boxer while his father is in prison.

The film was entered into four film festivals, and it won Best New Wave Short Film at the Yellow Fever Independent Film Festival.

In 2010, Mirallegro appeared in an episode of the BBC drama series Moving On as a gay youngster who suffers bullying in school because of his sexuality.

Beginning 2010, he appeared as an Italian foreign exchange student in nine episodes of the regular BBC series Doctors.

In December 2010, Mirallegro was in series one of the BBC One 1930s-period remake of Upstairs Downstairs.

He portrayed a young footman called Johnny Proude, who took up a position in service to escape the poverty of the northern mining town where he was born.

The BBC re-commissioned the production for a second series, in which he appeared again as Johnny.

In the second series, his character appeared in a boxing tournament, requiring Mirallegro to take boxing lessons for the role.

In the summer of 2010, Mirallegro finished filming for his role in McQueen the Movie.

He played Sam, a Jewish boy who is one of the story's two protagonists.

In 2011, Mirallegro appeared in the BBC's three-part psychological thriller Exile, playing the teenage version of leading character Tom Ronstadt.

Later that year, he played Sam, a gay heroin addict in the BBC drama The Body Farm.

His feature film credits include Spike Island (2012), Anita B. (2014), The Pass (2016), and Peterloo (2018).

Recognised in 2012 by Screen International as one of its "Stars of Tomorrow", he has been lauded as one of the United Kingdom's "most promising young actors".

In 2013, he began playing Finn Nelson, the love interest of the main female character in E4's teen comedy-drama series My Mad Fat Diary.

That same year, he also played the role of Joe Middleton in the BBC drama The Village.

In 2014, Mirallegro portrayed a teenager prosecuted for murder under the Joint Enterprise law in the controversial BBC One production Common, written by Jimmy McGovern.

Called "a bleak, powerful drama thick with political intent", a review started that Mirallegro "continues to prove himself as the best actor ever to graduate from Hollyoaks".

The 2015 television film The Ark told the story of Noah, along with elements from Islamic tradition.

Mirallegro portrayed Kenan, Noah's youngest (and extrabiblical) son, whose wish to follow a path different from his father and brothers results in his being swept away in the Great Flood.

Mirallegro also starred in HBO's Virtuoso, directed and partially written by Alan Ball.

Among his award nominations are those for Best Actor at the BBC Audio Drama Awards (2016, for Orpheus and Eurydice) and Best Supporting Actor at the BAFTA Awards (2014, for The Village).

In June 2017, Mirallegro acted in the BBC's BAFTA winning real-life drama Murdered for Being Different, about the Murder of Sophie Lancaster in 2007.

Set in the 18th century, Mirallegro played a self-taught violin prodigy who travels to Vienna to learn with other young musicians.

In 2019, it was confirmed he would be cast as an army soldier in the new series of the long-running BBC One drama Our Girl.

In November 2023, it was announced by Paramount+ that Mirallegro would star in a new original drama series Stags, filming on location in Tenerife and due to be released in 2024.