Finn Cole dives deep for his latest role

Finn Cole is somewhat of an adrenaline junkie. The 29-year-old actor is calling in from south London, slightly jetlagged, having spent a holiday in New Zealand bungee jumping, mountain biking and sky diving. ​“You’re coming down so quickly that you’re just getting blasted with air and wind in your face,” he says. ​“You can’t really react, you’re just looking down, and your eyes are watering. It’s all a bit chaotic!”

Luckily for Finn, his job also gets pretty extreme. He’s recently wrapped filming on Last Breath alongside Simu Liu and Woody Harrelson. The film tells the true story of diver Chris Lemons getting stuck 330 ft beneath the ocean with little breathing air left in his backup tank. Filmed inside a 11 metre deep tank in Malta, Finn says the experience was pretty brutal. ​“We did a lot of dive training,” he says. ​“The full equipment is very, very heavy and we’re weighted down underwater. It can be claustrophobic.”

To more accurately replicate Chris’ ordeal, the cast wore real deep sea diver helmets that, as Finn explains, ​“work brilliantly at 300 metres but not so well at eight or nine”, pushing the actors to get into the cool-headed mindset of the professionals they were playing. ​“It feels a bit like motorbiking,” Finn says, ​“where you have to really be completely focused in order to feel good and not like you’re going to lose your mind.”

There’s been an element of intensity throughout Finn’s career. At the age of 18, he landed his breakthrough role playing the sociopath Michael Gray in Peaky Blinders after being put forward by his brother Joe, who plays John Shelby in the series. ​“On my first day I was shooting an intense scene in the van with Helen McCrory,” Finn says of the daunting experience of starring in one of the most popular UK TV shows of the century. ​“But the start of the project was really helped along by the fact that my older brother was there and I could ask him all the silly questions.” On set, for the first time in his life, Finn felt really at home. ​“I just remember having this vivid feeling of knowing that this is where I should be.”

Between filming (when he’s not throwing himself out of a plane) you can find Finn being very present at the dinner table or taking some deep breaths at home — more below!

How long can you hold your breath for?

I reckon two minutes.

What should you never do at the dinner table?

Be on your phone.

Can you recommend us a musician to listen to?

K.O.G.

What’s something you absolutely cannot leave the house without?

My headphones or my Kindle.

Where’s an ideal place to take your last breath?

It’s got to be up a mountain somewhere.

What are Sundays for?

Roasts and movies and lie-ins.

What’s the key to staying organised?

Journaling and meditations.

What’s an interesting fact you learned recently?

That it’s better to put your milk in the tea with the tea bag first, which seems to me completely mental but supposedly the milk infuses the tea first, and then when you pour the water on it, it makes it all a lot tastier. I’m not necessarily sure I agree with it but apparently, that’s a fact.