Earl Cave is hot – but just don’t mention his famous dad
Nick Cave’s cult celebrity status is unmentionable when interviewing his son Earl, who is now his own rising star.
Earl Cave is the son of Aussie rock legend Nick Cave and he just happens to be a rising star.
After playing a major role in Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut film The Chronology of Water last year, Cave was at the recent Berlin Film Festival with Sunny Dancer, which has proved a hit.
Featuring a strong young cast led by Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones, The Last of Us), the lively coming-of-age story focusses on a group of teen misfits who form a strong bond when they come together at a camp catering for youngsters who have struggled with cancer and are now in remission.
Sunny Dancer is the second film from 25-year-old British director George Jaques. Cave is also 25.
Following Sunny Dancer’s world premiere as the opening film in Berlin’s Generation 14-plus youth-oriented section, The Guardian noted how “the shared experience of adolescent cancer gives new warmth to a familiar genre”, while Screen Daily says the film is “admirably unflinching in its exploration of the psychological fallout of illness”.
Cave, tall gangly and with tousled dark locks, is the spitting image of his father, although he will not discuss Nick Cave in our interview, where he is seated alongside Jaques and Neil Patrick Harris, whose character runs the camp.
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At the festival’s press conference, Bella Ramsey said making Sunny Dancer was the best experience both professionally and personally … “and it will be very hard to top”.
Cave had a lot of fun making it, too. The cast stayed together during the six-week shoot in Scotland and, like in the film, they formed a bond. After the film’s premiere they all went to Berlin nightclub Berghain, getting to bed at 4am. How was it?
“What happens in Berghain stays in Berghain,” muses Harris, 52, who answers for Cave. Harris adds that he only went to the film’s after-party.
Cave is wary of social media.
“I need to use it sometimes though I tend to stay off it,” he admits. “The film is a good representation of why. It’s about being on the outside, taking risks, being feral.”
Cave plays Ralph, the 17-year-old rabble-rouser of the group.
“I was crazy as a 17-year-old, but I was also working quite a lot,” Cave says. “But as soon as we were on set, I don’t know what happened, I just regressed to a kid … I’m 25 and I’m making jokes that I hadn’t made since I was 17, and I wouldn’t dare do that anywhere else. It was very cathartic.
“Ralph is so annoying. But you fall in love with him as the film goes along, and you kind of see that he is just a true freak. Other people are afraid to be a true freak and there’s a beauty in those kinds of people. There are less and less of these kind of eccentric, mad people these days as people are becoming afraid to express themselves.
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“It’s largely because of social media and not working out what you want to be on your own, without these things that are making you be influenced on your screen. That’s really what our film’s about, a group of people coming together, trying to work out where they fit in the world. And Ralph is accepted by them all in the end.”
The young cast have different cancers and, basically, have lost their youth because of the disease. Ralph has testicular cancer.
“A lot of the time you can lose a testicle. I always imagined Ralph losing a testicle as a young man, finding that quite emasculating so that he really had to be loud. He had to be the other ball. He was the other ball.”
Cave says he enjoyed living with his fellow cast members in Scotland.
“It’s quite scary going to a new city, and you really start to rely on each other just to keep sane, because it can be really lonely,” he says. “We were always together and you can see that friendship on screen.”
Cave sang on two songs in the film, including his original composition, Dolphins, from The Chronology of Water soundtrack.
He has enjoyed earlier, smaller acting roles in movies that include Justin Kurzel’s Australian film, True History of the Kelly Gang, Paul Feig’s The School for Good and Evil (Netflix) and the television series Dune: Prophecy.
When asked how he decides between acting and music, Cave responds: “I don’t want to decide between them. If they can come together, great. I love them both in different ways. They’re like two different children.”
Nick Cave is married to British fashion designer Susie Bick and in 2000 the couple welcomed twin sons, Earl and Arthur. Tragedy struck the family when Arthur died at the age of 15 after falling from a cliff while under the influence of LSD.
The effect of Arthur’s death was explored in Australian director Andrew Dominik’s 2016 documentary One More Time With Feeling, featuring Nick, though Earl does not mention this, even though the grim reaper hovers over the young characters in Sunny Dancer.
Cave says he’d love to work in Australia again. With a chuckle he describes his Australian roots as “my good half”.
Sunny Dancer‘s Australian release date is yet to be confirmed for 2026.
Helen Barlow is a Paris-based Australian freelance journalist and critic. In 2019 she received the La Plume d’Or for her services to French cinema. She is a voting member of the Lumiere Awards.
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