Gabriel Howell is a British actor best known internationally for playing Snotlout Jorgenson in the live-action How to Train Your Dragon. Before joining the DreamWorks fantasy franchise, he built his career across British television, film and theatre, with notable appearances in Netflix’s Bodies, BBC thriller Nightsleeper, The Fence and the West End production of The Unfriend.
Howell trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and graduated in 2021. Although his profile grew substantially through screen work, his career has remained closely connected to theatre. His casting as Snotlout put him alongside Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gerard Butler and Nick Frost and introduced him to a much wider international audience.
Who is Gabriel Howell?
Gabriel Howell is an actor from the UK who works across film, television and theatre. He was born in Hong Kong but spent much of his adolescence in Bristol, England.
In a 2025 interview, Howell explained that his family moved around when he was young because his father was a vicar. He described Bristol as the place that feels most like home and said that his interest in performing emerged early.
His enthusiasm for filmmaking developed alongside that interest in acting. As a child, he made short films using a camcorder and recruited his younger brother and friends to appear in them. A teacher later introduced him to drama school as a possible professional route.
That advice ultimately led to RADA. The academy’s official profile confirms that Howell completed its BA in Acting and graduated from RADA in 2021.
Publicly reliable sources do not provide enough consistent primary information to responsibly establish details such as his height, relationship or marital status. Those details are therefore best left out rather than inferred from celebrity databases or social-media speculation.
Gabriel Howell’s early interest in acting
Howell’s path into acting was not simply a move from drama school directly into a major studio production. His interest in creating stories began years before his professional credits.
Speaking to 1883 Magazine, he recalled making his own short films when he was young and being influenced by the period of online video in which creators frequently produced sketches and short-form films. He also explained that a teacher helped him understand drama school and encouraged him to audition.
Howell subsequently chose RADA, where the intensive actor-training environment gave him experience in stagecraft and character work.
In his interview with 1883 Magazine, Howell discussed exercises from his first year at the academy as well as how his training helped develop his understanding of acting. RADA’s records list his qualification as a BA in Acting.
That formal training became particularly relevant as his professional career began to span both theatre and screen.
Building a career through film and theatre
One of Howell’s early feature-film credits was The Fence, writer-director William Stone’s film set in 1980s Bristol. Howell played Dennis in the 2022 production.
At roughly the same stage of his developing screen career, he was establishing himself on the British stage.
He appeared in Steven Moffat’s The Unfriend, directed by Mark Gatiss. The comedy premiered at Chichester Festival Theatre before transferring to London’s Criterion Theatre in 2023. Howell was part of a cast that included Reece Shearsmith, Amanda Abbington, Frances Barber, Michael Simkins, Marcus Onilude and Maddie Holliday.
The production was significant in Howell’s theatre career because it brought him into a major West End show relatively early in his professional work.
He later appeared as Trevor in Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, directed by Patrick Marber at London’s Marylebone Theatre. The production also featured Joshua Malina, Caroline Catz, Dorothea Myer-Bennett and Simon Yadoo.
These stage roles show an important part of Gabriel Howell’s career that can easily be overlooked by viewers who discovered him through streaming television or How to Train Your Dragon. His professional background is not exclusively screen-based; theatre has remained a substantial part of his acting experience.
Gabriel Howell in Bodies
For many streaming viewers, Bodies provided the first major introduction to Howell.
The Netflix mystery-thriller follows a murder investigation unfolding across different periods of London history. Howell played the younger Elias Mannix, while Stephen Graham portrayed the older version of the character.
Elias occupies an important place in the story, meaning Howell was required to portray a younger version of a character whose actions have consequences far beyond his own timeline.
Howell later said that the character immediately interested him when he read the material. Rather than treating Elias merely as the younger counterpart to Graham’s character, he approached him as a person whose circumstances and vulnerabilities needed to work independently on screen.
The series gave Howell a prominent television credit and was followed by another British thriller.
Nightsleeper and Tobi McKnight
Howell subsequently joined the BBC’s Nightsleeper, playing Tobi McKnight.
The six-part thriller centres on a sleeper train travelling from Glasgow to London after it becomes caught up in a cyberattack. Howell’s Tobi works within the technical side of the unfolding crisis, connecting his role to the cyber-security storyline away from the train itself.
The project placed him in an ensemble that included Joe Cole, Alexandra Roach, David Threlfall, James Cosmo, Katie Leung and Sharon Small.
Taken together, Bodies and Nightsleeper demonstrated Howell’s move into increasingly visible television productions before his first major Hollywood franchise role arrived.
Gabriel Howell as Snotlout in How to Train Your Dragon
Howell’s most internationally recognisable role to date is Snotlout Jorgenson in the 2025 live-action How to Train Your Dragon, written and directed by Dean DeBlois.
He joined Mason Thames as Hiccup, Nico Parker as Astrid, Gerard Butler as Stoick, Nick Frost as Gobber, Julian Dennison as Fishlegs, Bronwyn James as Ruffnut and Harry Trevaldwyn as Tuffnut.
The project was particularly meaningful for Howell because he was already familiar with the franchise. He has said that he listened to Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon audiobooks as a child before becoming a fan of the animated adaptation.
Snotlout had previously been voiced by Jonah Hill in the animated films, creating the challenge of retaining the recognisable foundations of the character while adapting him for live action.
Howell explained that he took inspiration from Hill’s performance but wanted to find additional dimensions beneath Snotlout’s confidence and bravado. He characterised the Viking as someone desperate to embody an ideal of strength and leadership without necessarily possessing all the qualities he imagines himself to have.
The production also required performers to interact with dragons that would ultimately depend heavily on visual effects. Howell compared aspects of that work to theatre because the actors needed to use their bodies and imaginations to respond convincingly to creatures that were not physically present in their finished form.
In a detailed Wonderland interview about Snotlout and his acting background, Howell also credited the production’s puppet department with helping the cast establish a physical reference for the dragons during filming.
The role represented a considerable change of scale from his earlier television and stage projects, putting him into a globally established fantasy franchise alongside experienced film performers.
What is next for Gabriel Howell?
Howell’s association with Berk is continuing. He is among the returning cast announced for the live-action How to Train Your Dragon 2, with the sequel scheduled for theatrical release in June 2027.
The sequel gives him another opportunity to play Snotlout after the character’s introduction in the 2025 film.
It also marks another stage in a career that has developed across distinctly different formats. Within only a few years of graduating from RADA, Howell moved between West End comedy, contemporary stage drama, British television thrillers and a large-scale studio fantasy production.
That variety is central to understanding Gabriel Howell’s career so far. How to Train Your Dragon may be his most widely recognised screen credit, but it sits within a broader acting background shaped by formal drama training, theatre and British film and television work.
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