Jack Lowden
Jack Andrew Lowden (born 2 June 1990) is a Scottish actor. Following a four-year stage career, his first major international onscreen success was in the 2016 BBC miniseries War & Peace, which led to starring roles in feature films. He has received several awards including two BAFTA Scotland Awards and a Laurence Olivier Award.
Jack Lowden
Lowden starred as Eric Liddell in the 2012 play Chariots of Fire in London. In 2014, he won an Olivier Award and the Ian Charleson Award for his role as Oswald in Richard Eyre's 2013 adaptation of Ibsen's Ghosts. In 2013, he began to have substantial roles in British television series and feature films, including The Tunnel (2013) and '71 (2014), and had leading roles in the BBC miniseries The Passing Bells (2014) and War & Peace (2016).
His screen projects since War & Peace have included the title role as golfing legend Tommy Morris in Tommy's Honour (2016), the starring role of Morrissey in the biopic England Is Mine (2017), a main-cast role as an RAF fighter-pilot in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017), a starring role in the Scottish Highlands thriller Calibre (2018, for which he won the British Academy Scotland Award for Best Film Actor), Lord Darnley in Mary Queen of Scots (2018), a starring role as a plantation owner in 19th-century Jamaica in the 2018 BBC miniseries The Long Song, as Zak "Zodiac" Bevis in the 2019 comedy-drama WWE film Fighting with My Family, and the 2022 Apple TV series Slow Horses.
Early life[edit]
Lowden was born in Chelmsford, Essex,[1] the son of Gordon and Jacquie Lowden.[2][3] He grew up in the Scottish village of Oxton.[3][4] In a 2019 interview, he explained: "I'm an IVF baby. And so is my brother. Down there [England] was one of the few places that was doing it."[3] His younger brother, Calum, became a ballet dancer from a very early age at the Manor School of Ballet in Edinburgh,[5][6] and later trained at the English National Ballet School and the Royal Ballet School in London; as of 2016, he is a first soloist at the Royal Swedish Ballet.[7][8] As a child, Jack attended the dance classes at Manor School of Ballet as well, but found he was better at, and more suited to, acting.[5][6][9][10] He has stated that his personal ambition since childhood was to be a footballer.[3]
When he was 10, Lowden's parents enrolled him in the Scottish Youth Theatre in Edinburgh.[11] At age 12 he played John in a Peter Pan pantomime at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh.[11] He attended Earlston High School, where he starred as Buddy Holly in Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story and performed in various concerts.[12][13][14] His determination to become a professional actor came from seeing the play Black Watch on its first run in 2007.[15][16] While in high school, he studied during summer school at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.[13] He also performed regularly at the Galashiels Amateur Operatic Society, where he played the lead in a 2008 production of The Boy Friend.[17][13] Lowden received a BA in acting from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow in 2011.[13][18][19]
Career[edit]
2009–2011[edit]
In 2009, at the age of 18, Lowden starred in a television advertisement for Irn-Bru, sending up High School Musical.[20] In 2010 he had a small part as the character Nick Fairclough on an episode of the Glasgow-set television series Being Victor.[21][22]
In 2010–11, Lowden was the lead character, Cammy, in the National Theatre of Scotland's revival production of the Olivier Award-winning play Black Watch. The play is an incisive and topical look at the harsh reality of war, and depicts soldiers of the legendary historic Scottish Black Watch regiment serving in Iraq.[4] He and the rest of the cast underwent gruelling physical training during the rehearsals period to get into military shape.[15]
The Black Watch production toured to London (Barbican), Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Belfast, and in the U.S. to New York City, Washington, Chicago, Austin, and Chapel Hill.[4][23] UK reviewers deemed Lowden "a clearly hugely promising young actor"[24] "who carries off this amazing start to his career with assurance and maturity".[25] In the U.S., The Washington Post described him as "quietly charismatic" and a "stand-out";[26] this was echoed by the Chicago Sun-Times, which called him "easily charismatic";[27] and the Chicago Tribune noted his "rich and finely detailed work".[28]
Personal life[edit]
From 2019 to 2021 Lowden resided in Leith, Edinburgh, before moving back to his native Scottish Borders in May 2021.[76][3][77] He is an outspoken supporter of Scottish independence.[78][79]
Since 2018 he has been in a relationship with Irish actress Saoirse Ronan, his co-star in Mary Queen of Scots.[80] An Instagram post in July 2023 sparked speculation that they are engaged.[81]