‘The Haunting Of Hill House’ Star Oliver Jackson-Cohen On How Fame Is Ephemeral Starring On A Netflix Show

Oliver Jackson-Cohen starred in the Netflix anthology series The Haunting of Hill House in 2018, which gave him a global platform.

The actor is now reflecting how fame can be so ephemeral in the streaming era of television.

“[Being] Netflix famous…It’s quite an interesting thing,” Jackson-Cohen told The Independent in a recent interview. “You’re the most famous person in the world for a while and then the next show comes along and that completely takes over.”

Jackson-Cohen would star in a second season of the Mike Flanagan anthology series titled The Haunting of Bly Manor in 2020. The actor said that following the success of the shows, he started receiving scripts that were “all the same thing, just watered-down, less good versions” of the series he had starred in.

Following his work with Netflix, Jackson-Cohen has starred in Apple TV+’s Surface and Prime Video’s Wilderness. The actor has also started building his film credits by starring in Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man (2020), Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter (2021), Emma Holly Jones’s Mr. Malcom’s List (2022), Frances O’Connor’s Emily (2022) and Jamie Child’s Jackdaw (2023).

“I’ve played quite a lot of toxic men. But I’ve become fascinated with the question of, ‘how do we humanize these morally corrupt characters?’ There’s a challenge in that, which I think is quite fun,” he said of the characters he’s played on film and TV. “But, like anything, you go through periods where you like to play a certain thing and then it’s time to move on.”