Joe Locke

Joseph William Locke (born 24 September 2003) is a Manx actor. He is known for his lead role as high school student Charlie Spring in the Netflixteen series Heartstopper (2022–present), for which he received a nomination for the inaugural Children's and Family Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Performance. In 2024, he starred in the Marvel Cinematic Universe miniseries Agatha All Along and portrayed Tobias Ragg in a Broadway revival of the musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Joseph William Locke was born on September 24, 2003. He grew up in Douglas, Isle of Man. He attended Ballakermeen High School. He told ITV's This Morning in April 2022 that he was studying for A-Level exams in politics, history, and English. While in high school, Locke and three fellow students submitted a petition to government officials to investigate the feasibility of welcoming Syrian refugees to the Isle of Man.

Locke participated in the 2020 National Theatre Connections, productions at the Gaiety Theatre, and with the Kensington Art Centre's youth group. In April 2021, it was announced Locke would star as Charlie Spring in his debut television role in the 2022 Netflix coming-of-age series Heartstopper, an adaptation of the webcomic and graphic novel of the same name by Alice Oseman.

He was chosen out of 10,000 other potential actors who were up for the role through an open casting call. Locke, who was 17 at the time of the filming, played a 14–15-year-old student in an English boys' grammar school. In November 2022, it was announced that Locke had been cast in Marvel Studios' WandaVision spin-off television series Agatha All Along for Disney+.

Locke plays a goth character initially referred to as "Teen," who is later revealed to be Billy Maximoff / William Kaplan, also known as the son of the Scarlet Witch. On 31 January 2024, Locke took on the role of Tobias Ragg in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street on Broadway. Locke came out on Instagram when he was 12 and told his mother he was gay.

Realising he was ready to be out to his family but not the world, he deleted the Instagram post. He came out again at 15. Locke has spoken about his experiences of being a young gay man from the Isle of Man and the parallels with Charlie's story in Heartstopper. In August 2022, Isle of Man Health Minister Lawrie Hooper announced that the government would change its blanket ban on gay men donating blood after Locke called for the "archaic" rule to be changed in a video message played at the island's annual pride celebration.

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