Is Mescal the Irish Brando?

THERE is a lot of love in Cannes for actor Paul Mescal, being dubbed ‘the Irish Brando’ by some excitable types. He made a global breakthrough playing Connor in TV’s Normal People and has been making the rounds of the parties in town while two of his films have been showing at the Festival: Aftersun and God’s Creatures.

In disturbing news for his fans, he is sporting a very bad moustache — though I’m told he’s grown it for a WWI role.

The critics (including my colleague Brian Viner) are most excited by Aftersun, in which Mescal plays Calum, a young divorced Scottish dad on holiday with his daughter. Writer and director Charlotte Wells took as her inspiration an old photo of herself taken by her father.

She said: ‘I am five or six years old, and sitting by the pool, and there is this beautiful woman, naked, behind me. And I saw it and thought: “Oh. was I the subject of this picture after all?”’