Even a mullet won't stop Harris Dickinson from becoming your newest obsession

Harris Dickinson has a mullet.

I am sitting with the British actor, who co-stars in Ruben Östlund’s Palme D’Or winning film Triangle of Sadness, at La Plage du Martinez in Cannes, remarking on the trendy haircut. He tells me that it’s for a role in a new FX series called Retreat, in which he stars opposite Emma Corin.

“I’m playing a street artist, so this is my hair for the next four months,” he says. “At the start of the job I was like, ‘Great, this is a nice change. I’m into this’. It helps you lean into the character – something different than what you have. It’s an access into it. But I keep catching myself in the mirror like, ‘Oh, this is not what I imagined’.”

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At least they let him remove the temporary neck and face tattoos, also a requirement of the role, ahead of his Cannes debut.

Dickinson’s career has been simmering steadily for several years now. He first broke out as a Brooklyn teen exploring drug use and his sexuality in Sundance-winning indie film Beach Rats. Since then he’s made the leap to blockbusters via The King’s Man and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. But now, as a Cannes darling starring in a film with a deafening buzz, he’s reached that boiling point. The 25-year-old is poised to become capital F famous. The sort of famous that gets stopped in the airport. The sort of famous that has, in the last 24 hours, popped up on my Instagram feed accompanied by thirsty captions like “New King Alert.”

I ask him if he’s considered this at all and it appears as though he has not. “No, no, no… I don’t think so,” he says. He isn’t being coy; Dickinson is charmingly perplexed by the very possibility of this occurring. “I don’t envy that level of fame. It’s not in my crosshairs.”

He looks every bit a movie star in a decadent Dior shirt and high-waisted trousers, however he assures me that in his every day – when he isn’t being dressed by a stylist for conversations like this one – he’s “way more scruffy.”

In Triangle of Sadness, Dickinson plays Carl, one half of a model couple grappling with his waning career and the fact that his girlfriend Yaya, played by Charlbi Dean, cashes a bigger pay cheque than he does. When Yaya is offered a free trip aboard a luxury yacht in exchange for some Instagram posts, the handsome couple find themselves aboard a horror cruise among the wacky and weird one per cent.

Related: "I feel like I should be screaming all the time": 'Triangle of Sadness' star Charlbi Dean hits Cannes

It wasn’t the actor’s first time at sea. “I was in the sea cadets for a year and then I moved to the marine cadets. So it was a lot of boating stuff,” he says, adding that he’s “alright at sea.” “But when everyone else starts being sick, it’s gross.” I ask if people were sick on the set of this film and he responds with a chorus of “yeahs.”

Few boats compare to the Christina O, on which Triangle of Sadness was filmed. The super yacht was once owned by Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Kennedy. “It was so absurd, to be in Greece on this historical luxury yacht,” he says. “You send pictures to your mates and your family and it’s like, ‘Look where I am today’.”

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Being in Cannes and promoting an anticipated film that was wrapped over a year ago presents its own level of absurdity. “It’s my first time here. I’ve only been here for, like, 24 hours and I’ve soaked up all the luxury I need for a couple of months,” he says.

As for how he plans to celebrate following the film’s premiere later that evening? “I’m going try not to faint on the red carpet."