All the Films Proving David Cronenberg Loves British Talent

The fact that one of genre cinema’s most invasive and empathetic filmmakers makes his films outside of Hollywood is telling. One of David Cronenberg’s greatest impacts was inspiring many Toronto New Wave directors in the 80s and 90s not to leave their native Canada to make films – nearly all his movies were made in Ontario, even if they were for major studios (Cronenberg himself has maintained he’s never made a studio film – mainstream films like The Dead Zone and The Fly were made with producers who liaised with studio chiefs). 

This reluctance to embrace the compromised mechanisms of Hollywood has led Cronenberg towards more singular artists and niche topics, leading to collaborations with European talent and financiers – not to mention a proclivity for a tendency to cast British actors and adapt British texts.

From when Cronenberg started making commercial films in the 70s, there were legions of authentically British actors who could add a touch of theatrical gravitas to the low-budget, nasty (but always tactile and psychologically-slanted!) horror or sci-fi movies that Cronenberg made. As his reputation grew and he attracted reputable artists and set his films around the globe, the pool of British talent and literature that collaborated with Cronenberg only grew. If you want to get your British fix at the same time as your body-horror one, here are 10 films where Cronenberg proved he was and is still fascinated with British artists.

Half-psychiatrist, half-New Age guru Dr. Hal Raglan is a commanding figure in Cronenberg’s bitterest, ugliest early film, 1979's The Brood, where the filmmaker channeled a nasty divorce into a violent story of parenthood and familial breakdown. Oliver Reed – himself a notorious misogynist – plays the controversial doctor who has sequestered Nola (Samantha Eggar) for therapy against a backdrop of brutal, mysterious murders. Both Reed and Eggar bring the film its dramatic heft, lending thespian intensity to the confronting domestic horror.

The Brood is streaming on Max.

In the first of his two collaborations with Cronenberg, English actor Jeremy Irons came out swinging in 1988’s Dead Ringers – playing identical twin expert gynecologists feuding over the same woman (Geneviève Bujold). The film becomes a psychosexual war of wills that ultimately threatens to consume both brothers – or at least absorb one into the other – and Irons’ caustic, snarling lead performance(s) paint a vast, textured landscape. Everything one brother does is connected to the other’s behavior, ambition, and insecurities, and the actor is right at home in the film’s wry depiction of toxic medicine.

Dead Ringers is streaming for free via Peacock.

In his ambitious (and more original than you might suspect) adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ surreal Beat Generation travelogue novel, 1991's Naked Lunch, Cronenberg assembled an intergenerational, multi-disciplined cast – and a few monstrous puppets while he was at it. At key points in the sprawling, conspiracy-addled story, the fugitive Lee (Peter Weller) encounters Tom Frost (Ian Holm) and Yves Cloquet (Julian Sands) in the North African region Interzone – the fact that Yves is both Swiss and a giant centipede doesn’t detract from both English actors giving focused, arresting performances in a tableau of disorientation. For more Englishmen in Burroughs, check out Daniel Craig in Queer.

Naked Lunch is streaming on Kanopy.

Colonial fetishism sits uncomfortably at the center of 1993's M. Butterfly, one of the lesser-seen Cronenberg dramas. The film casts Jeremy Irons as a French diplomat in 1960s Beijing who falls in love with a Peking opera singer—a spy for the People’s Republic of China. It’s a thorny, aching period drama (a rarity for the director) that willingly pushes itself into complex thematic waters—namely, the intersections of gender and Orientalism, where Irons is asked to channel his most dejected performance to date.

M. Butterfly is available to stream as an Amazon rental.

No British actors in 1996's Crash (not to be confused with Oscar winner Crash from 2004) – the contributions of provocative author J.G. Ballard and accomplished producer Jeremy Thomas qualify this car-crash fetishist thriller for this list. Crash created a furore of scandalized indignation on release, and today stands as one of Cronenberg’s most controversial but also uncompromised visions of the body begging for new horizons. The gray concrete of mid-90s Toronto made a strong substitution for the novel's setting, '70s London – Ballard’s text evokes images of a desperate industrial British capital that feels appropriately squirmy.

Crash is streaming on Kanopy.

eXistenZ is the 1999 film where Jude Law is scared of penetration, where bioports take you into a virtual reality video game, and there’s a gun made from bones. On the eve of the 21st century, Cronenberg looked ahead to our present-day nightmare of humans becoming infected by immersive, invasive digital worlds. A bright-eyed, excitable Jude Law guides us through a maze of reality-defying conspiracies and assassins. However, look out for appearances from other British actors like Ian Holm, Christopher Eccleston, and Callum Keith Rennie.

eXistenZ is streaming on Paramount+.

The first of two Cronenberg films set and shot in London, 2002's Spider adapts Patrick McGrath’s unsettling novel about Spider, a schizophrenic man who returns to his East End home and is quickly overwhelmed by his traumatic past. Cronenberg’s film is quiet but oppressive, and Ralph Fiennes’ near-silent performance is the empathetic key that unlocks a character we probably would recognize on any city’s streets. Irish legend Gabriel Byrne is here in a pretty unlikeable role, and Miranda Richardson plays characters in Spider’s past and present to hammer home the Freudian connotations.

Spider is streaming as an Apple TV rental.

In 2007's Eastern Promises, a trafficked Russian woman leaves an incriminating journal that the London arm of the Russian mafia wants back – Anna (Naomi Watts), a midwife in the city, walks into a criminal family and a web of lies to get answers. In contrast with Spider, Eastern Promises is richly contemporary, filled with profane characters and scathing dissections of how organized crime embeds itself in the fabric of an uncaring metropolis. It's an authentic London picture, but Cronenberg probably sees himself in the taciturn outsider Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), a mafia enforcer who surveys everyone from a willing, scrutinizing distance.

Eastern Promises is streaming via Fandango at Home.

Speaking of Freud, in 2011's A Dangerous Method, Cronenberg dove into the relationship between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) during the birth of psychoanalysis. The standout performance comes from Keira Knightley, who truly pushes herself out of her comfort zone as one of Jung’s most discussed patients, Sabina Spielrein (who would later become one of the first female psychoanalysts). The accent work is a treat for the ears, as is her bracing and full-throttled physicality that best evokes Cronenberg’s obsession with bodily experience turning into agency over your reality.

A Dangerous Method is available on streaming as an Amazon rental.

It’s hard to fault Robert Pattinson’s casting in Cosmopolis – released months before The Twilight Saga wrapped up in 2012; his performance as an unfeeling, sociopathic asset manager was a calculated move to be pushed out of his comfort zone after four years of teen fare. Set mainly in the billionaire’s limousine across a single day, we watch his impassive, territorial gaze surveying a swiftly changing world, inching him closer to a discovery about the barbarity of human nature.

Cosmopolis is streaming for free on Tubi.