Connor Newall was sixteen and rushing to class at Trinity High School in Renfrew when casting director Claire Catterson stopped him for a Scottish Government knife-crime film called One Knife, Many Lives. The role had personal weight. His cousin Andrew had been killed in a Glasgow knife attack in 1996.

The work led to a second scouting a year later, this time for modeling. Model Team signed him on the spot. Within twelve months he had covered 10 Men and shot inside Vogue Italia, Vogue Hommes International, Love, and Wonderland. Steven Meisel, Mert and Marcus, and Tim Walker were all on the early call sheet.

The face the industry kept calling for was a specifically Scottish one. The bowl-cut fringe, the pale blue eyes, the prominent ears of a teenager who looked closer to the mid-nineties wave of male models, when individuality was the casting argument, than to the polished faces of the decade before him.

Dsquared2 made him the face of its classic collection. Tom Ford, Stone Island, MSGM, Comme des Garçons, KTZ, and Adidas followed. G-Star placed him alongside Pharrell, Adwoa Aboah, and Jean Campbell in its multi-cast campaign. Connor covered ICON Italy in spring 2025 and stayed inside the editorial rotation that picked him at sixteen.

The acting career he talked about in his earliest interviews has since happened. He appeared in Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later in 2025 and returned for the Nia DaCosta sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.

Catterson cast him as an actor first. Fashion kept him for nine years. Boyle took him back.