---
name: "Joe Thomas"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/joe-thomas"
fi1m_id: "joe-thomas"
imdb_id: "nm3022504"
tmdb_id: 1240639
wikidata_id: "Q6212645"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "28 October 1983"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 3
average_fi1m_score: 79
average_as: "actor"
average_over: 2
updated: "2026-10-07T17:34:15.781825+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Joe Thomas

## Identity

Joe Thomas

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/joe-thomas
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** joe-thomas
- **IMDb ID:** nm3022504
- **TMDB ID:** 1240639
- **Wikidata ID:** Q6212645
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Thomas_(actor), https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6212645, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3022504/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1240639

Actor. Born 28 October 1983 in Chelmsford, Essex, England, UK.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 28 October 1983, Chelmsford, Essex, England, UK
- **Active:** 2008–2011
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 3: 2 acting, 1 other
- **Frequently works with:** [Gordon Anderson](https://film.one/person/gordon-anderson.md)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 79, as actor, over 2 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 2000s 84 (1), 2010s 78 (2)
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Thomas_(actor), https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6212645, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3022504/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1240639

## Streaming the US now

- **Amazon Prime Video:** [*The Inbetweeners*](https://film.one/tv/the-inbetweeners.md) (84)
- **The Roku Channel:** [*Fresh Meat*](https://film.one/tv/fresh-meat.md) (74)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Joe Thomas

> Joe Thomas plays young men who have decided how they will come across and whose faces have not been told. It is a narrow gift, and casting has rarely asked him to leave it, but within it he is exact, patient and generous.

Watch Joe Thomas at the start of *Fresh Meat* (2011). Kingsley Owen walks into the student house having decided to be cool this time, and his face has not been told. That is the whole act, and it is a good one. Thomas plays young men who have a plan for how they will come across and a body that files a different report, and the comedy sits in the gap between the two. He does not push the gap. He lets us find it.

He came up through the Cambridge Footlights, which may explain the ensemble instinct, because he has almost never been the loudest person in a scene and has never seemed to want to be. Simon Cooper in *The Inbetweeners* (2008–2010) was the breakthrough, and the four leads, Thomas with Simon Bird, James Buckley and Blake Harrison, made the friendship convincing without asking us to approve of much that was said within it. None of them needed to win an exchange. Buckley's Jay brags, Thomas's Simon responds, and the response is often the funnier half. Two films followed, in 2011 and 2014, and then *Fresh Meat* took him to university for four series, opposite Jack Whitehall's JP and Zawe Ashton's Nordstrom, both of whom get the bigger lines. Thomas holds the middle of the frame while they take it.

Since then he has written as well as acted, co-creating *Chickens* (2013) with Bird and Jonny Sweet, and *White Gold* (2017–2019) put him back beside Buckley in 1980s Essex, the county he was born in. *The Festival* (2018), directed by Iain Morris, co-creator of *The Inbetweeners*, gave him a film lead; *The Crown Jewels* (2023) put him on stage. None of it has taken him far from the awkward, decent young man, and he has said as much. "I would love to do a villain because I think villains are so interesting," he told an interviewer in 2017. Casting has not yet obliged.

We should admit that we laughed at Simon Cooper harder than at anyone else in that quartet, and felt a little ashamed of it, because Thomas never plays Simon as a fool. He plays him as a boy who means it every time, and the effort is what hurts and what is funny. That combination, the vulnerability arriving half a second after the joke, is what *Fresh Meat* used well and *The Inbetweeners* used best.

Is he wasted? Not yet. The ensembles have suited him because his gift is reactive, and a reactive actor needs a room. But the nice-guy label has stuck, and we would like to see a director test what that face does when it has something to hide. Our guess is that it cannot, which would make either a fine joke or a fine part.

## Biography

Joe Thomas is an English actor and comedian. He is best known for playing Simon Cooper in the E4 sitcom *The Inbetweeners* (2008–2010) and its film adaptations *The Inbetweeners Movie* (2011) and *The Inbetweeners 2* (2014).

Thomas was born on 28 October 1983 in Chelmsford, Essex. He attended King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, and read History at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Footlights alongside future co-star Simon Bird. After graduating in 2006, he appeared in *Fresh Meat* (2011–2016) as Kingsley Owen and in *White Gold* (2017–2019) as Martin Lavender.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (3)

### Performed in (2) — the average rests on these

- *Fresh Meat* (2011), Fi1m 74, as Kingsley Owen — [page](https://film.one/tv/fresh-meat.md)
- *The Inbetweeners* (2008), Fi1m 84, as Simon Cooper — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-inbetweeners.md)

### Also credited (1) — thanks, archive footage, uncredited

- *Taskmaster* (2015), Fi1m 82, as Self — [page](https://film.one/tv/taskmaster.md)

## Complete filmography (22)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *New Zealand Spy* (2026), series, as Michael Anderson
- *Universal* (2025), as Leo
- *We Are Not Alone* (2023), as Greggs
- *Maternal* (2023), series, as Dr. Matt Malyon
- *Mummies* (2023), as Thut (voice)
- *Plebs: Soldiers of Rome* (2022), as Amadeus
- *We Are Not Alone* (2022), series, as Greggs
- *Rhod Gilbert's Growing Pains* (2021), series, as Guest
- *Mamma Mia! Here We Go Yet Again* (2019), as Three Very Different Young Men
- *The Festival* (2018), as Nick
- *White Gold* (2017), series, as Martin Lavender
- *The Darkest Universe* (2016), as Toby
- *Scottish Mussel* (2015), as Danny
- *The Inbetweeners 2* (2014), as Simon Cooper
- *Chickens* (2013), series, as George Wright · Creator
- *Fresh Meat* (2011), series, as Kingsley Owen — Fi1m 74, [page](https://film.one/tv/fresh-meat.md)
- *The Inbetweeners Movie* (2011), as Simon Cooper
- *A Trick of the Light* (2011), as Joe · Writer
- *The Inbetweeners* (2008), series, as Simon Cooper — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-inbetweeners.md)
- *Comedy Showcase* (2007), series, Writer
- *3 of a Kind*, as Robin Banks
- *The Inbetweeners 3*, as Simon Cooper

## Gallery

- ![Actor from The Inbetweeners: Joe Thomas at the at the BAFTA's 2009.](https://film.one/media/person/101576/gallery-2c5c2e379807.jpg) Actor from The Inbetweeners: Joe Thomas at the at the BAFTA's 2009. — Damo1977, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Joe_Thomas%2C_2009.jpg/1280px-Joe_Thomas%2C_2009.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Actor from The Inbetweeners: Joe Thomas at the at the BAFTA's 2009.](https://film.one/media/person/101576/gallery-1bec7bc14bf1.jpg) Actor from The Inbetweeners: Joe Thomas at the at the BAFTA's 2009. — Damo1977, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Joe_Thomas_2009.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Joe Thomas at the BAFTA Television Awards 2012 in London, May 2012.](https://film.one/media/person/101576/gallery-3a264d177924.jpg) Joe Thomas at the BAFTA Television Awards 2012 in London, May 2012. — Paul Bird, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Joe_Thomas_2012.jpg/1280px-Joe_Thomas_2012.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Joe Thomas](https://film.one/media/person/101576/gallery-b10f597b377d.jpg) Joe Thomas — Bryan Berlin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Joe_Thomas_at_the_2024_Edinburgh_Festival_Fringe_2.jpg/1280px-Joe_Thomas_at_the_2024_Edinburgh_Festival_Fringe_2.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Joe Thomas](https://film.one/media/person/101576/gallery-a03fe17f0580.jpg) Joe Thomas — Image via TMDB
- ![Joe Thomas](https://film.one/media/person/101576/gallery-54d576ec4b8d.jpg) Joe Thomas — Image via TMDB
- ![Joe Thomas](https://film.one/media/person/101576/gallery-e03335e20d3f.jpg) Joe Thomas — Image via TMDB
- ![Joe Thomas, comedian, at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland.](https://film.one/media/person/101576/gallery-99767dd57406.jpg) Joe Thomas, comedian, at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland. — Bryan Berlin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Joe_Thomas_at_the_2024_Edinburgh_Festival_Fringe_3.jpg/1280px-Joe_Thomas_at_the_2024_Edinburgh_Festival_Fringe_3.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/joe-thomas