Dominic Cooper

Currently: Making his Broadway debut as Dakin, the schoolboy of everyone's affection at the heart of Alan Bennett's acclaimed new play, The History Boys.

Hometown: Greenwich, London, England

Wilkommen: With a glint in his eye, Cooper says his career choice was a no-brainer: "I started [acting] when I was in school because it was the only way I could continue on and do my A-levels," the prerequisite tests for applying to college in the U.K. "I wasn't very good academically. I think they wanted rid of me," he says good-naturedly. "The bad eggs generally get booted to not look bad on the league tables," the British school system's progress reports based on students' success. "But then the drama department persuaded the head that we needed an emcee in Cabaret and I was the only person who could do it. So I had to act!"

Nick of Time: Just out of school, Cooper landed a role at London's prestigious National Theatre under newly appointed resident director Nicholas Hytner—a relationship that eventually brought him to The History Boys in 2004. "I had just finished His Dark Materials [a two-part thriller based on Philip Pullman's novels and directed by Hytner] and came straight into doing this. It was a huge relief just to be sitting down in a school uniform and not running around with a knife and a wolf chasing you," he recalls.

A Little Too Nice: In The History Boys, Cooper plays a character whose motives hover somewhere between sincerity and manipulation, pleasantry and seductiveness. His is not the only of Bennett's characters to be something other than he seems—an important point in explaining the boys' reaction or lack thereof toward Posner, a classmate with a penchant for torch songs and a not-so-subtle crush on Dakin. "That's something we mentioned quite early on in rehearsals: If someone was gay in our school—or if people thought they were—they got treated like shit," he says. "[The play's characters] are extremely pleasant to Posner." This collective laissez faire attitude might seem a little too idealistic in the age of anti-gay-marriage laws. "But," Cooper explains thoughtfully, "they are also the exceptional bunch of boys in this school. They're the top of the top and they're kind of prepared for anything in that group of friends, aren't they? I think they're beyond that."

One of the Guys: Cooper loved having the playwright on hand during rehearsals, but says Bennett's 40-year career as a dramatist and founder of the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe didn't make him immune to the wrath of the show's 20-something cast—a truly tight group Cooper affectionately calls "a bunch of absolute numbskulls." He confesses, "In a way, [Bennett] loves being treated like absolute dirt! Some of us didn't even know who he was. None of us have been educated at university, so we just treated him like one of the guys. We were horrible to him. But it kind of worked really well. We all became really good friends with him."

Coming to America: "Everyone's really so lovely," on Broadway, the actor says. "We've been to bars and people from other shows have come over and introduced themselves and welcomed us to the neighborhood. I can just imagine in the West End if we were sitting in the corner and a bunch of American actors in such-and-such-a-show came in—we'd be really horrible to them!" Cooper hopes his Broadway career won't stop with History Boys' limited New York run, though his attachment to the play will last at least through October, when the film version, starring its original cast, is released in the U.K. Already his versatile acting has prompted comparisons to Jude Law. "He's an old family friend, and unfortunately I know full well I don't have his looks," Cooper says with a laugh. "But being the one in the cast who's sort of the center of attention of both boys and the one girl that's mentioned is…well…it's very nice!"