Harris Dickinson didn't plan to have role in debut feature Urchin

Harris Dickinson wasn't supposed to have a supporting role in his feature directorial debut Urchin.

The Babygirl actor's film, which he wrote and directed, stars Frank Dillane as Michael, a homeless man in London trying to break free from a cycle of self-destruction.

Dickinson originally planned to remain behind the camera, but when the actor set to play Michael's junkie friend Nathan dropped out, he ended up filling the role.

"We had an actor lined up and he had to drop out for personal reasons, quite close to the shoot," he told Deadline. "We read a few people, we offered it to some people, and then in the end I just decided to do it myself."

The Triangle of Sadness star noted that it "wasn't the easiest role to schedule" because they only needed Nathan for five days of the whole five-and-half-week shoot.

"So, it sort of made sense. I mean, I'd been reading the lines with Frank already in rehearsal, so when Frank turned around and said, 'You should do it,' I did. And, yeah, it was challenging," he continued.

The 28-year-old, who made short films before Urchin, took a whole year away from acting to focus on his feature debut, and he intends to do so again once he's finished playing John Lennon in Sam Mendes's four-film Beatles project.

Now that Urchin has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Dickinson has cleared his slate so he can focus wholeheartedly on playing the iconic musician.

"I think I'll be doing that for the next however long it'll be. That's all I'll be doing. But it is the way it needs to be, really, with something like that. You can't try and do a few different things at the same time, no. I don't like to work like that," he shared. "They're becoming extremely important to me. They're my every day right now."