AP Breakthrough Entertainer: Owen Cooper goes from 'Adolescence' to new 'Heights'

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Owen Cooper hasn’t had thoughts of EGOT. He’s hardly had time to develop that kind of ambition in his short time as an actor. But, presented with the idea, he’s intrigued. And amused.

“Is that the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar and the Tony?” he asks, with a laugh. “I’ve got E, so I want it.”

Cooper does, in fact, have “E.” He won an Emmy Award this year, at 15, for his astonishing-for-any-age performance as a 13-year-old suspected of a killing in Netflix's “Adolescence.” It was his first screen appearance, and his first performance that wasn’t for parents.

Still just 16, he's now been named one of The Associated Press’ Breakthrough Entertainers of 2025.

Speaking to the AP while sitting on a balcony at a West Hollywood hotel, Cooper concedes he has no idea how he’d ever win a Grammy, though he loves music (Oasis, Stone Roses). And a Tony feels daunting, though the one-take episodes of “Adolescence” required the work of a play.

“Even an Oscar,” he says. “I don’t know how I’ll win an Oscar.”

But, more broadly, Cooper knows what he does want to do.

“When I first started doing drama lessons, like I was just, I just didn’t want to do it,” he says. “I didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of all these people. Now, I’m like, ‘I want to be one of those actors that are just fearless.’”

Cooper becomes Oscar-eligible in 2026, when he makes his film debut in director Emerald Fennell's buzzy adaptation of “Wuthering Heights,” starring Margot Robbie. Cooper plays the younger version of Jacob Elordi's Heathcliff. He doesn't share scenes with the leading stars, but they interacted plenty.

“I’d always be going on set and they’d always just be coming off so I’d speak to Jacob loads,” he says. “I would always be next to Margot in the makeup chair so I speak to them quite a lot and they're really nice people.”

By the time the movie's shoot was done, Cooper was a star in his own right. “Adolescence” and all its acclaim arrived during filming of the Emily Brontë adaptation.

After the ordinary, modern environs of “Adolescence” and the other series he’s shot, “Film Club” — which premiered in October on BBC Three in the United Kingdom and is not yet available to watch in the U.S. — he was stunned by the setting, and the outfits, of “Wuthering Heights.”

“The attention to detail in that film was just insane,” he says. “Obviously I’ve not been in it a long time but it just blew my mind, like the set and just everything about it is just mad.”

He’ll remain in the distant past for his next film, director Tom Ford's “Cry to Heaven,” set in 18th century Italy and starring Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and, in her acting debut, Adele.

Cooper's clearly a prodigy, but he's no lab-grown child star or nepo baby. He's the youngest of three brothers from a non-industry family, raised in Northern England's Warrington, between Manchester and Liverpool. His accent has notes of both cities, but he's a devoted Liverpool supporter; soccer was the center of all his childhood ambitions — and most of his waking hours.

“I grew up near, like, a park so I would be on there since 8 in the morning to midnight just playing football,” he says. “It was just everything. I didn’t care about anything else.”

Acting became a secondary hobby when he began classes at 12 at Manchester's Drama MOB. But he loved it, and the school drew something special out of him that led to his landing “Adolescence” over hundreds of other candidates.

Stephen Graham, the series co-creator who won his own Emmy for playing Cooper’s father, has called him “the talent of a generation” and “the next Robert De Niro.”

On that note, Cooper says he wants to work with “gods of the game” like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and David Fincher. But he doesn't want heavy drama to define him.

“I want to do horror, I want to do, like, a superhero, I want to do sci-fi,” he says. “I just want to do everything.”

For more on AP’s 2025 class of Breakthrough Entertainers, visit https://apnews.com/hub/ap-breakthrough-entertainers.

Actor Owen Cooper poses for a portrait on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Actor Owen Cooper poses for a portrait on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Actor Owen Cooper poses for a portrait on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Actor Owen Cooper poses for a portrait on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Actor Owen Cooper poses for a portrait on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

BUNIA, Congo (AP) — A tent used for treatment of the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo was set on fire for the second time this week, and 18 people suspected of infection escaped into the general population, the local hospital director said Saturday.

Unidentified people arrived at the clinic in Mongbwalu, a town at the center of the outbreak of the Bundibugyo virus, a rare type of Ebola, on Friday night and set fire to a tent set up by the Doctors Without Borders charity for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases, Dr. Richard Lokudi, director of the Mongbwalu General Reference Hospital, told The Associated Press.

“We strongly condemn this act, as it caused panic among the staff of the Mongbwalu Referral Hospital and also resulted in the escape of 18 suspected cases into the community," he said.

On Thursday, another treatment center in the town of Rwampara was burned down after family members were prohibited from retrieving the body of a local man.

The bodies of those who died of Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when people prepare them for burial and gather for funerals. The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is being managed wherever possible by authorities, which can be met by protests from families and friends.

A burial for Ebola patients in Bunia, another town within the outbreak zone, took place on Saturday under high security as tensions between health workers and the local community ran high.

Authorities in northeastern Congo on Friday banned funeral wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. The World Health Organization said that the outbreak now poses a “very high” risk for Congo — up from a previous categorization of “high” — but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday that 82 cases and seven deaths have been confirmed in Congo, but that the outbreak is believed to be “much larger.”

There is no available vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, which spread undetected for weeks in Congo’s Ituri province following the first known death while authorities tested for another, more common, Ebola virus and came up negative. There are now 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, though more are expected as surveillance expands.

Dr. Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said a response to the outbreak must include building trust with communities.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Saturday that three of its volunteers had died from the outbreak in Mongbwalu. The agency said it believed the three healthcare workers contracted the virus while carrying out dead body management activities on March 27 as part of a humanitarian mission unrelated to Ebola.

This would significantly push back the timeline of the outbreak from the previous first confirmed death in late April in the town of Bunia, the capital of Ituri.

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McMakin reported from Dakar, Senegal.

Motorcycle taxi riders and their passengers wait at the entrance to the central market while sanitation workers disinfect the area, as Ituri province continues to combat an Ebola outbreak in Bunia, Congo, Saturday, May 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Members of the Congo Scouts movement carry an Ebola awareness banner along a street during a public sensitisation campaign amid the Ebola outbreak in Bunia, Congo, Saturday, May 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Motorcycle taxi riders and their passengers wait at the entrance to the central market while sanitation workers disinfect the area, as Ituri province continues to combat an Ebola outbreak in Bunia, Congo, Saturday, May 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

A sanitation worker from the Bunia city government sprays chlorine to disinfect the central market, as Ituri province continues to combat an Ebola outbreak, in Bunia, Congo, Saturday, May 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Sanitation workers from Bunia city government spray disinfectant in the central market area near a rubbish truck in Ituri province, as they continue efforts to combat the Ebola outbreak in Bunia, Congo, Saturday, May 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)