SINNER STAR MILES CATON: ‘THE BAFTAS WERE FOREIGN TO ME – NOW I’M NOMINATED IN THEIR BIGGEST CATEGORIES’

At 20, Miles Caton is still getting used to waking up in a world in which he’s one of the biggest rising stars in Hollywood.

When Sinners landed a jaw-dropping 16 Academy Award nominations, breakingAll About Eve, Titanic and La La Land’s joint record, the Bafta EE Rising Star nominee didn’t learn the news at a champagne breakfast or a Hollywood party.

‘I set my alarm for 8.30am Eastern Time, so I woke up out of bed and immediately turned [on] the Oscars feed,’ he says.

‘Everybody else was in the house watching it in their rooms and as the nominations were read out they started just screaming. It was crazy.’

A former musical prodigy whose voice once caught the attention of Jay-Z, Caton made a striking acting debut in Ryan Coogler’s 1930s-set vampire horror.

He plays Sammie, a preacher’s son and sharecropper with extraordinary musical gifts, recruited by his gangster cousins (both played by Michael B. Jordan) to perform at their new juke joint.

It’s a role that demanded both emotional depth and a voice that, at least in the movie, breaks down the barriers of time and space.

Coogler found him via a self-taped audition, which he described to Variety: ‘He was just in the dark — like he didn’t turn his lights on. Something about that was, like, so intriguing. This kid looked like he was in his basement, like in between homework assignments. But he had this voice — a once in a lifetime voice — and he also felt like the character.’

Caton shrugs off the idea of lightning-in-a-bottle casting. For him, the film’s power came from its origins.

As the nominations were read out everybody started just screaming. It was crazy

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‘Because it started with Ryan wanting to make a tribute to his Uncle James,’ he says. ‘Ryan put his all into this film, this is his story and I think that made everybody else put their all into the film too.’

Caton believes that sense of personal stakes invaded the entire process.

‘The environment that was created on set was extremely collaborative,’ he continues.

‘It felt like a family environment. It felt like no ideas were shunned and everybody could kind of express how they felt. Creativity was just flowing consistently every day and I think people can feel that through the screen.’

The industry certainly has. Alongside Sinners’ awards juggernaut, Caton has landed a Bafta EE Rising Star nomination, a surreal milestone for someone who, until recently, knew little about the film world’s prize culture.

‘This being my first year in film, a lot of this stuff was super foreign to me,’ he admits.

‘Now I’m on the flip side, I’ve done my research, and I’ve grown more knowledge and respect for acting and learned more about things like the Baftas and stuff.’

While music has always been personal, acting offered something else — a chance to step outside himself.

‘Film, it’s personal to a certain point,’ he explains, ‘because you have to draw from your own personal experiences to be able to understand and embody the character, but you’re also playing somebody else. Acting allows you to think from a different perspective, a different point of reference – that’s the cool thing about it.’

Those personal experiences came in handy when playing Sammie. Raised in a deeply musical, religious household (his mother is gospel singer Timiney Figueroa), Caton understood the connections between music and spiritualism intuitively.

‘You want to make your family proud, but at the same time you want to do your own thing,’ he says. ‘Those are a lot of the same subjects that the Sammie was going through.’

Music, after all, arrived early for Caton.

‘I was three,’ he says, recalling a moment that still feels decisive. ‘I have this formative memory where I was at my grandfather’s church and I sung A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke and everybody in there went crazy.’

From there came birthday parties, local events, then social media — and eventually a viral video of him singing Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, sampled by Jay-Z on 4:44. Before he’d finished high school, he was touring internationally with H.E.R.

But despite life on the road as a teenager, Caton kept his feet on the ground.

‘I’ve always been a “get the work done first and then have fun” type of person,’ he says. ‘So after shows, there would be some days where I could stay out a little bit later, have fun and chill. And there will be other days where I was like, “All right, I gotta get back to the hotel room and get this assignment done.”‘

Given Sinners’ spine-crawling moments, it’s tempting to ask what frightens him. The answer, it seems, is not much.

‘I literally grew up watching horror films,’ he says, reeling off titles his uncle used in increasingly futile attempts to scare him. ‘None of them would ever scare me. I’ve always been like a daredevil type of person. I love adrenaline rush things.’

Next stop: London, where Caton is preparing for his first Bafta red carpet.

‘I’m working on it with my stylist,” he says of his outfit. “But yeah, I’m excited. I love London.’

For someone who once filmed his audition in near-darkness, it’s clear the lights are very much on now, and the world is watching.

You can vote for the EE Rising Star Award, the only BAFTA voted for by the British public via WhatsApp, ee.co.uk/BAFTA,  or across EE socials.  Voting closes at 12pm GMT on Feb 20.

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2026-02-04T16:13:37Z