The actor Jack Lowden, 34, is Scottish in every respect, except that he was born in England. His parents soon returned the family across the border, where he was enrolled in Scottish Youth Theatre and, at the age of 19, bagged his first major role, the lead in the National Theatre of Scotland’s 2010 revival of the Olivier award-winning Black Watch.
Lowden would go on to win an Olivier of his own, for the role of Oswald in the Almeida’s 2013 production of Ibsen’s Ghosts. Screen work followed, including a BBC adaptation of War and Peace, a Scottish Bafta-winning role in Terence Davies’s final film, Benediction, and the 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots, where he met his now-wife, the four-time Oscar-nominated Irish actor Saoirse Ronan (whom Lowden refers to simply as “Sersh”).
The couple married in Edinburgh last month, but not before collaborating as producers on a screen adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s Orkney-set sobriety memoir, The Outrun, for which Ronan, who also stars, is garnering some early Oscars buzz. Meanwhile Lowden is holding up his end of the “showbiz power couple” deal with a forthcoming role in the latest from legendary Hollywood film-maker James L Brooks, Ella McCay, and an Emmy nomination for Apple TV’s much-acclaimed hit Slow Horses, in which he plays not-so-slow MI5 operative River Cartwright opposite Gary Oldman’s scruffy spymaster.
Lowden’s return to the National Theatre of Scotland later this month will be the icing on the cake. He’s co-starring with Sean Gilder in The Fifth Step, David Ireland’s new play about a fledgling Alcoholics Anonymous member and his older, more experienced sponsor.
Two of your recent projects – The Fifth Step and The Outrun – concern alcoholism and sobriety. What interests you about those subjects?
What I’ve discovered, in my small experience with these two projects, is that AA helps people in many, many ways, but it also makes people into brilliant orators and storytellers, because you’re really just there telling stories. Also what’s bizarre – and this happens in the play – is how little alcohol is actually talked about. Like, they might turn up and say: “I’m here because I get too pissed when I go on a night out, and I did a stupid thing,” but then it’s all about delving deeper. It’s all to do with shame, and for me that’s what the play – forget alcohol – is about: the idea of shame and how we deal with it.
Speaking of alcohol consumption, how was your Glastonbury?
The funny thing is, Glastonbury was only a couple of weeks before we started working on this play, so I said to the people I went with: “I’m gonna have to be quite boring.” During the days, I was on my own, learning lines. But it was a wonderful experience. I cried at Keane. And Little Simz, I just stood there with my mouth open. Her stage presence was off the charts.
I read that your idol when you were growing up was Frank Sinatra. What did you admire about him?
He was definitely one of them. And, talking about alcohol, I used to – such a tart! – I used to, when I was really young, get a whisky glass and put ice and Diet Coke in it, and sit with it, pretending it was a scotch, just listening to Frank Sinatra on my own… But what I love about Frank Sinatra – and it took me years to work this out – is the same thing I love about acting: it’s rhythm. I don’t really look at what the play or film is saying, who it’s speaking to, because I just think that’s so subjective. It will speak to people in different ways. I’ll read a script and if the rhythm is enjoyable, if it feels like music, that’s what really excites me. And Sinatra had this incredible ability to sing these very, very famous songs, but almost every time he sung them he would bend the rhythm ever so slightly. Fantastic.
I hear there’s a big amateur dramatics scene in the Scottish Borders, where you grew up?
Oh, it’s huge. Massive. A group of my mates from school, four or five of us, like The Inbetweeners, all came with me and did it. And It’s a weird mix of people. Suddenly, you were stood next to retired teachers, or firemen or whatever, for months of rehearsals, like two or three times a week and then six shows. But I did every musical under the sun and now I look back on it and go: if I didn’t do it with those guys, I probably would have been too scared. I’d have thought it’s a bit of a weird thing to do, musical theatre. But it’s quite normal in the Borders.
You’ve recently moved into producing films, how’s that been?
I read The Outrun in lockdown and just turned to Sersh and said “You’ve got to play this part.” We were both producers, as well as Sersh being in it. It was the most amazing experience – in particular, to watch her in that role. She’s utterly phenomenal. But then the madness of making an independent film is just… great fun and terrifying. It’s a miracle any of them ever get made. We would love to produce more stuff, but we’re taking a beat at the moment, because acting is getting in the way.
Is it is it difficult being married to another actor?
No, being with an actor is wonderful, because we understand each other. We’re quite odd people, actors. We’re strange animals. So it just makes complete sense, and I understand why there are loads of other actors with actors… And it’s really useful for running lines, rather than with, like, your mum. Is it hard to maintain privacy? I don’t know. I think I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve had quite a slow-building kind of career, and I’ve been allowed to grow up and get things wrong. I can’t imagine what it must be like, if you’re 18, 19 and you’re in a huge show and all of a sudden everybody wants to know everything about you.
Do you think you’d make a good spy, like your Slow Horses character, River Cartwright?
Quite a lot of people do seem to think they’d be a great spy. I’ve always thought so. A benefit of being a bit shy is that I’ve spent a lot of time sort of sitting and watching people make an arse of themselves first. I think that might come in useful. But from the small insights we’ve had on that show, from ex-intelligence officers, it just sounds mental, what they go through and the isolation of it. But they’re also wonderfully competitive. They all enjoy feeling like they’re the smartest person in the room.
You’ve played a striking number of soldiers in your career. What’s that about?
It’s more of a reflection on what’s made on these islands and our obsession with the world wars, I think. And, you know, you play one and then that’s all people can think of you as. So it was quite nice when I did Dunkirk, to be considered for [the role of] a pilot and not a soldier. That was a bit of a change.
Has it given you any insight into what it’s like to go to war?
No! God, no! One of my oldest mates was in Afghanistan twice, two different tours, and I’ve never really spoken about it with him. He doesn’t really talk about it, and I can imagine –only imagine – why. My first big job was a play here at the National Theatre of Scotland, Black Watch, about the Iraq invasion, which brilliantly summed up how the public don’t understand and the frustration that squaddies feel at that. But also the strange pride; that they have experienced things that others haven’t.
What do you do to relax when you’re not working?
Anything history related. At the moment, Christopher Hibbert’s book on the Medici in Florence. Although I normally only read books set in or about the area I am in. Even if go from one part of Scotland to the other – I wouldn’t read a book set in the Highlands if I was in the Lowlands.
You were born in England, but raised in Scotland. How Scottish are you?
I consider myself 100% Scottish, for sure. My parents are Scottish. It’s where it was brought up. It’s where I was made. And it’s true that my first screen role was an Irn-Bru advert. I did it when I was 18 at drama school and I think it was played during half-time in the Champions League final or something. I think of it like national service.
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The Fifth Step is at the Royal Lyceum Edinburgh, 21-25 August, as part of the international festival. The Outrun is in UK and Irish cinemas from 27 September
