Shazad Latif is at the heart of the love triangle in Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’

Tailor made, literally, and Latif rocks his costumes, the creations of two-time Oscar winner Jacqueline Durran. From the handmade silk-lined gold shoes and silk pyjamas to the fur collared smoking jackets in the new version of the Emily Bronte classic, Latif relished everything about making the latest version of the story, a mashup of the golden age of Hollywood, 18th-century Yorkshire and contemporary gothic gloss.

Edgar, a refined, educated and well-mannered textile merchant who is the polar opposite of Heathcliff and wins the hand of Cathy in marriage, is a well turned out gent.

“Silk pyjamas with a dressing gown are always fun and I have these gold shoes,” says Latif. “Also, Edgar has this wonderful dinner outfit with a big fur coat that is so over the top. Every costume is. Well, he was a textiles merchant. And the sets were amazing, even his bedroom is insane with green fur on the walls, so it was just wild,” he says.

“Heathcliff got the sexy stable boy stuff. But I got the other sexy, high class sexy.”

Latif explains how even his facial hair had to be just right, from his home in North London, just before he jets off to Los Angeles for the premiere.

“I had a moustache already but it wasn’t quite right. It started off swirly then got shorter and shorter, from very silly and Poirot-esque to more Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind.”

Now 37, Latif was up for the Hollywood version as he spent his childhood watching movies with his mum, who had worked as a reel changer in a cinema in her youth, and his nan, who was a classic film buff, while he and his dad bonded over movies.

“We were watching Legends of the Fall and he said if I wanted to be in movies I had to look like Brad Pitt. He was topless in a scene, and I was like, ‘I can't look like Brad Pitt!.”

“Funnily, for 'Wuthering Heights' I ended up with my dad’s moustache. He was famous for it. No-one ever saw his top lip. And he would always be twirling it,” he says, giving his an obliging tweak, although today the the silk pyjamas are repaced by an Arsenal top.

“I live very close to Arsenal,” he says. “I grew up around here.”

Born in London, Latif is of mixed Pakistani, Scottish and English descent (the Scottish on his mother’s side). Sadly his dad didn’t get to see his son become a leading man as he died just as Latif was embarking on his career with a role in spy drama Spooks in 2009.

Latif had told his father he was studying Spanish and Portuguese rather than acting and only told him the truth when he left Bristol Old Vic Theatre School early to take up the Spooks role.

“But when he found out about the paycheck for Spooks he was like, ‘oh, that's good, that's great.’ He only ever saw one episode, but I always remember the times we would watch movies and now his son’s on the screen. It’s one of those nice circle things and hopefully in some way he knows.”

Latif is modest, downplaying his leading man role in ‘Wuthering Heights’, despite having played the lead opposite his friend Lily James in the 2022 romcom What's Love Got To Do With It? - he starred with Ridley again in the TV thriller Magpie - and his action hero status in the Sky Original series Atomic with Alfie Allen and Amazon Prime’s Nautilus.

“You've got two of the hottest people ever, Cathy and Heathcliff, played by Margot [Robbie] and Jacob [Elordi]. Jacob, a man who looks like a Greek god. He's six foot five, he's like Achilles or Hercules, but he's an Aussie guy so he's cool and looks like a basketball player with the soul of John Keats. He's like the perfect man. And I'm like… oh God…

“But it's so great for the character because when you arrive on set you see this beautiful person,” he says of Elordi. So Edgar might know how to hold his teacup and the correct way to eat a scone, but he understands why Cathy is drawn to Heathcliff.

“It’s that thing of being magnetically drawn from your innards to this other person. They know it's going to destroy everything, but for a time, there's hope, and that's always the beautiful story.”

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Published in 1847 Emily Bronte’s book is set in the late 18th century and there have been numerous TV and film adaptations. Growing up together at Wuthering Heights, Cathy and Heathcliff share a deep bond but she marries the wealthy Edgar and a heartbroken Heathcliff vows revenge.

Of the latest version Emerald Fennell said “you simply can't adapt a book so dense, complicated and difficult as Wuthering Heights, so you create a version of it rather than replica.”

Latif agrees.

“I would say of the versions I've seen, this is the most visceral, the most emotional. It draws you in. It looks stunning. And it's got the best soundtrack.”

With music composed by Anthony Willis (Saltburn, Promising Young Woman), and original songs from Charli XCX, Latif declares the music to be ‘just heartbreakingly beautiful’.

“I could never have thought it would look as amazing and as stunning as it does. You read the script, you act it out and don’t know what they’re going to cut, then you see how they’ve cut it and that’s the beauty of making a movie.”

Given that it’s such a visceral and heightened take on what is already an emotional story, did it take it out of Latif, working on it every day for months, in Yorkshire and London where the sets were so vividly imagined that real horses were used on indoor sets.

“It sounds poncey when actors start talking about that kind of stuff, but yes, you give it 100%, and it’s a five to six month process and you don’t really think about much else during that time.

“It's not like really serious stuff that's going on in the world, but your brain space is fully committed and you're all there on set every day and it's just a strangely beautiful, weird energy thing. You're all giving this feeling of love and intensity and emotion to scenes and hope that people respond to it.”

Latif was familiar with the story, reading the Bronte sisters at school, and having watched the 1939 version starring Merle Oberon as Cathy, Laurence Olivier and Heathcliff and David Niven as Edgar Linton with his mum and nan.

“I was watching the original movie from very young. It was one of the few VHSs my nan had, that and Now Voyager, El Sid, Great Expectations, so I was familiar with all these old movie stars and old Hollywood and it’s a sort of homage to that era. There are shots in it that remind you of the original.
And to be playing part of that lineage - David Niven played this character - it was such a joy. I’m so grateful, from where I started out. I hope my nan enjoys it.

“The book was so ahead of its time and it’s a classic for a reason. I think that's the beauty of art, that it can keep recycling in different versions and adaptations.”

What does Latif think of Edgar and how does he play him?

“It isn’t just that he’s rich, it’s that he's clever, he's kind. This is a man who turns a blind eye and lets the woman he loves love someone else because it's enough for him to say all right, I love you, I’ll marry you, let you love this man. And it ends up destroying all of them because he tries to tame it, keep it caged up.

“It's a beautiful thing to be part of this love triangle. And then it becomes a love square with Isabella [Edgar’s sister, who Heathcliff marries as part of his revenge].

“The madness of love drives them and destroys all their lives, but you sort of understand each person's justification for what they're doing, even though they're doing these horrible things to each other.

“If you play the cuckold right, it's even more heartbreaking because you know Cathy's going to destroy that man's life, but you know why she is doing it. It’s very interesting to play that sort of flawed character of Edgar, trying to tame a woman. There’s control and repression and he has to be more gentlemanly than everyone else because back then maybe he would have got hanged if he acted on his jealousy. So you‘ve got all that in your head and then you get on set and see Jacob Elordi and you go, oh yes, I would be jealous of him. He's so hot.”

“And Edgar can't really compete with the childhood trauma that’s bonded Heathcliff and Cathy. They’ve gone through things he has no idea about. They've grown up together, been beaten and poor together so Edgar doesn't stand much of a chance. Maybe Edgar’s love is kinder. But because of Edgar, this storm that is Heathcliff turns a lot darker a lot quicker.”

So what is love, is it the crazy, dysfunctional traumatic madness that Heathcliff offers, or the kinder, calmer Edgar version?

“I think both are love. It's just that one can burn out. One's toxic, with passion junkies who are addicted to each other whereas the other is stable and balanced and yeah, might not be as exciting, but you're gonna not die from it.”

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While some of the exteriors were filmed in Yorkshire, production designer Suzie Davies, who also did Conclave, created lavish sets in London, including an exterior of Wuthering Heights.

“The set was stunning. You could walk through the house into the huge garden with real plants and grass. It was wonderful to get there early and sit and walk around while they're filming something else. It’s a great way to work.

“And we did a bit of riding. It can be a bit weird in the studio for the horses so you've got to be very careful, and that's always fun and interesting.”

Latif is used to working with horses and has done a lot of action films and TV, so for him playing a textiles merchant a departure that he enjoyed.

“I spoke to a loom expert because I thought that’s something I should know about. What does a textile merchant do? What's weave and a weft and how does a loom work? At that time they were starting to industrialise. Just to start knowing what that world was like paid off because one of the scenes was a tracking shot and they said just talk about looms or whatever and I said ‘no, I actually can’. You don't even hear it but the joy of being prepped… Also that's the joy of being an actor, that you get to experience these worlds. It also made me feel good to improvise in front of Margot, Jacob, Alison [Oliver, who plays Isabella Linton and made her film debut in Saltburn] and Hong [Chau, as Nelly Dean]. So it gives you a bit of a boost and was fun. But I did get a bit obsessed with looms.”

Latif is proud of his Scottish heritage through his mother’s side and worked in Glasgow for three months filming Falling for Figaro, the 2021 Ben Lewin film which also starred Joanna Lumley, Danielle Macdonald, Gary Lewis and Hugh Skinner.

“Glasgow I absolutely loved. Big up the Glasgow Pakistani community, great food, great nights out. Awesome. We went to Loch Lomond too and that was great.

“My granddad was from Dundonald, about 20 minutes from Kilmarnock. He was a painter and decorator and used to paint lighthouses in different parts of England and Scotland. He was a fascinating, intelligent, beautiful man, but died when I was six or seven so I didn't spend much time with him. I found a book of his Scots poetry recently. I’ve always loved going to Scotland. I did my ancestry DNA, and I was 33% Scottish, way more than English which is like 7%, so I was yes! It's great to be more Scottish than English.”

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Latif discovered acting at a young age, when a teacher decided her class of eight year olds would tackle Romeo and Juliet.

“She made us audition by doing the balcony scene with one of the girls up on a stool and we had to improvise the lines. All the boys wanted to play Tybalt or Mercutio because those were the cool parts, and no one wanted to be Romeo, but I was ‘your eyes are like the moon’, so I got Romeo. There were two Juliets because they couldn't choose, one for the lower half of the school performance then the other one for the higher end of the school. I got to play Romeo for both so my mum was proud of that.”

Another love triangle. Did the Juliets ask who he preferred?

“I think we did have those conversations,” he laughs.

“And we were always watching films at home. My mum used to keep a diary of her movies and she worked as a film roll changer in the cinema at one point. And my Uncle Bernie and Aunty Rita, I would like do Gladiator impressions for them and it was always film chat and my nan, who is 92 now, still has all the old movie stars on her wall, Errol Flynn, Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, all of them, and we’d watch those films.

“Also my friend's dad was a theatre actor, Roger Lloyd-Pack, who played Trigger and Only Fools and Horses, and he taught me a bit about theater. So I was always obsessed with movies and then it grew into doing it. I studied film at A-level then realised it was a way out, because we grew up very poor.

“It was survival as well as passion and that's sort of a double whammy. I sort of knew what I wanted to do quite young.

“Then you try it and realise how hard it is and bloody hell it's going to be a tough old ride!”

But he’s not complaining, loving every minute of his chosen career, with his ambition undimmed.

“I want to be in everything. I want to be in work with the best, with the calibre of people I just worked with - Margot and Jacob, Alison, Emerald. I think this is the best job in the world.”

'Wuthering Heights' is on general release from Wednesday 11 February, 2026.