James Nelson-Joyce was born on the 4th of May 1989 in Orrell Park, Liverpool to a working-class family from the Walton Vale area of Liverpool. He left school without qualifications, not realising at the time that he was Dyslexic and got into acting by an unusual route, James recalls, "I fancied my English teacher and to get her attention in class, I used to put different accents on. She saw something in me and said, 'Why don’t you do this speaking and listening exam', which he did. Then the head of English weeks later told him 'You’ve just been given the highest mark ever in the North West for this speaking and listening exam.' James says, "Then, when the school didn’t want me back, Miss Griffiths (his English teacher) said, 'What are you going to do now?' I said, 'I don’t know.' She said, 'I think you should be an actor,' and advised me to go this community college. I went to The City of Liverpool College and it all kind of stemmed from there." He furthered his acting education at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts and when he was in his first year of drama school, he was told that he'd better lose his accent because he wouldn’t work much as a scouser. It’s safe to say that he’s since proved that assertion completely wrong. If it wasn't for a chance meeting in a London branch of Nando’s with Stephen Graham, James says, "I don’t know where I’d be". Fresh out of drama school he'd just come out of an audition when he saw Stephen having dinner with his wife. He says he thought, "you know what, f*** it, I’ll go over and say hello." I said ‘Look, lovely to meet you. You’re the reason I got into acting.’ I told them to enjoy their dinner and sat back down. Later he says, "Hannah comes over and she says, ‘There’s something about you. Here’s my email. If you’re ever in anything, or you’re ever on the telly, just send me an email and we’ll watch it'.
James started off with a number of small roles in 'Shameless' (2013), 'Casualty' (2014), 'Cilla' (2014), 'No Offence' (2015) and 'Vera' (2016) before a more substantial part in 8 episodes of 'Mount Pleasant' (2016). His first notable role, in 2017, was playing the teenage gang member James Yates, who provided the gun that killed 11-year-old Rhys Jones in the ITV Liverpool based drama 'Little Boy Blue'. Stephen Graham had signed up to play the police officer tasked with bringing the killer to justice. The weight of this story inevitably hung over the cast, so James was glad to see a familiar face at the first table read. "I just felt these eyes burning in my head, and I look up and it’s Stephen. And he just goes, ‘are you that lad from Nando’s? Boss that, lad! and gave me a thumbs up. It was the biggest pat on the back I could've got." Stephen was so impressed with how James handled the role that he recommended him to his agent.
In 2019 he was the lead in the Lena Headey directed BAFTA nominated short film 'The Trap' and then co-starred with Maisie Williams in the music video 'Miracle' (2020) by Madeon, again directed by Lena Headey. In 2021, he starred in six episodes of the BBC crime comedy series 'The Outlaws', when seven strangers from different walks of life are forced together to complete a community payback sentence in Bristol. The same year he worked again with Stephen Graham playing bullying convict Johnno in the Jimmy McGovern directed BBC prison drama 'Time'. After 'The Responder' (2022) and 'Industry' (2022) gave him more TV exposure, in 2023 he continued his recurring role as Brian Reader in the 1983 Brink's-Mat robbery series 'The Gold' and then in the 1980s British family gangster series 'A Town Called Malice'. In October 2023 he filmed the lead role in the British indie crime feature 'Reputation' which was premiered at the BIFA-qualifying Spirit of Independence Film Festival in 2024 and received strong reviews with James winning Best Actor.
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| James and Stephen in 'A Thousand Blows' |
Then in 2025, he secured a main role as boxer Edward 'Treacle' Goodson, working for the third time alongside Stephen Graham in 'A Thousand Blows', in which they portray pugilistic siblings Treacle and Sugar Goodson. James said it was such a treat to play brothers as he was still his idol and one of his closest friends. In fact, after their meeting in Nando's, Stephen recalls, "As he left, we were eating our dinner, and Hannah
turned to me and said, ‘you know what, he has a look of you, he could
really really play your brother’ – and she was right!" On the phone to Stephen, who had just phoned him on an off
chance, Stephen said, 'I think this thing with Stephen Knight (creator of
Peaky Blinders) is going to come off. It’s about these two brothers who
are bare knuckle boxers. "I was like, 'Yeah, great.' Then he said, 'I’ll call you back in a bit'."
"Then about six months later Stephen calls and says, 'You’re going to get an audition'. I said, 'Sound'." There then followed possibly his biggest role to date, when in 2025 'This City Is Ours', saw him playing the lead role as the leading gang member, the consigliere of gang boss Sean Bean's character Ronnie Phelan, struggling to balance his criminal career and family life, against a
backdrop of changing modern masculinity. James said, "On the first day filming in Liverpool,
we were in a block of flats that were next door to the apartment block I
used to live in. We filmed for a couple of days in Aintree, which is a 10-minute walk
from where I live, and we also filmed on Longmoor Lane, which is right
by my old school, Archbishop Beck. So that was a bit weird."
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| Diana (Hannah Onslow) and Michael in 'This City is Ours' |
The same year James was named as one of the cast in the 7th season of Charlie Brooker's anthology sci-fi future technology based television series 'Black Mirror' (2025) in the episode 'Plaything'. James says, "I got a phone call from my agent, asking 'What are you doing on this date?’ And I was like, 'nothing'. And she was like, ‘Do you want to do Black Mirror?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, of course!’
His teacher, Miss Griffiths remains in his corner. "I am immensely proud of the young man he’s grown up to be and the successes he has achieved to date. I have watched everything he has been in and just blown away with his talent! I am extremely privileged to have been his teacher!"
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2025/08/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-nathan.html
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