John Nugent

John Nugent is Reviews Editor at Empire magazine. A film journalist for over a decade, he first joined the magazine in 2015 as a Junior Online Writer, moving over to the print magazine in 2017 to become News Editor, before taking over the reviews desk in 2022. As the commissioning editor for all of Empire’s reviews, he watches an unholy amount of films, spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about star ratings, and often ponders the subtle yet important difference between a “high three” and a “low four”.

During his time at Empire, John has journeyed into the jungles of Hawaii (where Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson presented him with a bottle of tequila), hung out with Idris Elba in an Ibiza nightclub, rubbed shoulders with the (fake) Pope in the (fake) Sistine Chapel, toured a haunted house in San Jose with Helen Mirren, browsed the tiny sets of the Shaun The Sheep film at Aardman in Bristol, and once wrote a review of a James Bond film at the Royal Albert Hall while wearing a tuxedo. He has reported from film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Toronto, Goa, and Venice; for the latter, he once had to take a speedboat to a private island to interview the Coen Brothers.

He once asked Michelle Yeoh about dildos for the Everything Everywhere All At Once feature; spoke to George Clooney about fake bears for a feature on unreleased 1980s curio Grizzly II; heard Danny Dyer talk about getting “off his nut” for a Human Traffic anniversary piece; and heard Nicolas Cage say “I’m going to tell you something that I’ve not told other people”. He also counts among his greatest professional achievements the time that Will Ferrell complimented his hair, the time Tom Hiddleston thanked him by name in an awards acceptance speech, and the time he once made Tina Fey laugh.

John has been obsessed with films since wearing out an eclectic mixture of video tapes on his family VHS player, which included E.T., Space Jam, Toy Story, and Home Alone 2: Lost In New York. (He later wrote 2,000 words on why Home Alone 2 is better than Home Alone and would be happy to expand upon this in person to anyone who has a spare couple of hours.) He went on to earn a BA in Film Studies and Philosophy at the University of Kent, where he developed a love for filmmakers like Buster Keaton, Robert Altman, Hayao Miyazaki, Bong Joon Ho, Jane Campion and Powell & Pressburger. He still loves Home Alone 2, though.

He can be found on Twitter at @mr_nugent and on Instagram at @fullynuge.