Callum Turner was born in London, where he grew up in public housing with his single mother, who worked as a nightclub promoter on the London club scene.
Callum left school at 16 to play for a semi-professional football team. However, realizing he would never make it as a full-time professional athlete, he gave it up at 17 and began a sucessful modeling career. A huge film fan, he also decided to give acting a shot.
In 2012 he landed recurring roles on the mini-series Leaving and The Town, both for ITV. In 2014 he was cast in a starring role as Eli on all four episodes of E4’s mini-series Glue from BAFTA-winning writer Jack Thorne.
On the big screen, he made his starring debut in the critically acclaimed Queen & Country (2014). He also landed a small role in Victor Frankenstein (2015), starring Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy.
He told the UK paper Independent in 2020 that between the ages of 18 and 26, he "self-medicated" by smoking marijuana. He added that the habit "definitely stunted something." Determined to change and “not miss my life,” he kicked the habit.
Finally clean, in 2016, his career took off. He was chosen to be part of a stellar ensemble cast, including fellow rising British actor Lily James, for the BBC’s War and Peace mini-series, which went on to win an Emmy and a BAFTA Award.
He also landed roles in major motion pictures such as Assassin's Creed (2016) with Michael Fassbender and Jeremy Irons and Amazon Studios' The Only Living Boy in New York (2017) alongside Jeff Bridges, Kate Beckinsale and Pierce Brosnan. The next year he played Theseus Scamander, the brother of Eddie Redmayne's character in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) and the romantic figure Frank Churchill in the latest adaptation of Jane Austen's novel, Emma (2020).
Callum gained a lot of fans when he was cast as the lead character Shaun Emery on Amazon Prime Video's crime thriller The Capture (2020), a mini-series about a soldier, who is recently released from prison, when he's accused of kidnapping a woman as seen on a CCTV video. However, he knows he didn't do it and sets out to find the woman and prove his innocence.
Callum, who has never had Instagram or Facebook accounts, deleted his Twitter account after realizing how much time he spends on his phone.
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, he'd completed filming the romantic drama Last Letter from Your Lover opposite Shailene Woodley. It does not yet have a release date.
He is currently dating fellow actor Vanessa Kirby (The Crown, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw), whom he met while filming the 2014 drama Queen & Country.