his parents had relocated in order to access
IVF treatment, but grew up in the small
village of Oxton after his family returned to
Scotland. During his childhood, he developed
an intense devotion to a number of classic
British sitcoms – Only Fools and Horses, Open
All Hours, Porridge – and would watch them
obsessively. “It was like a comfort blanket.”
He would even take his collection of DVDs
on holiday, so as not to be parted from them,
and would hate it whenever he’d see behind-
the-scenes footage of, say, Only Fools, in which
the Trotters’ Peckham flat was revealed to be
a film set with a studio audience. “I didn’t want
to know that it wasn’t real,” he says. “Everything
in those programmes just had a lovely air to it.
Everything seemed quite innocent. Nobody
seemed bored. There was no boredom at all.
And I just wanted to live in them.”
He would tag along to his brother’s ballet
classes and have a bash himself. “But I was
shite at dance and was encouraged, very
quickly, to do the narrating.”
The sensation of being on stage, however,
was something he soon came to love. And
with the encouragement of his parents and a
particularly supportive music teacher at the
local state secondary school he attended,
Lowden found himself entering the world of
amateur operatics in the Scottish Borders. He
became, in fact, a fixture at the Galashiels
Amateur Operatic Society. This sounds twee,
almost comic. But he shakes his head. “It’s a
big thing. It’s huge. In the Borders, it’s like life
and death,” he says levelly. “There are like
eight or nine societies. People who have been
in their society for 50 years get their 50-year
medal. They take it f***ing seriously. More
seriously than in the profession.”
He was swept along by the intensity and
energy of this tight but passionate rural arts
circuit. Four of his best mates did it with him.
“It was like a rite of passage. And none of
them are actors now. But they loved it,
running about and acting in musicals.” The
way he describes it, there was something
almost transcendental about it. “You’d be in
Guys and Dolls performing next to a fireman or
a teacher or whatever. Just seeing these people
light up on a Tuesday night was amazing.”
After doing his A-levels, Lowden studied
acting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music
and Drama and, in 2010-11, played the lead
role in the National Theatre of Scotland’s
production of Black Watch. This play, which
details the experiences of soldiers from the
Scottish regiment in Iraq, toured the UK and
the United States. “We didn’t play theatres. We
played arenas. You felt like a rock star,” he says,
without bravado. More stage credits came, and
he won his Olivier for Best Supporting Actor
in a 2014 production of Ibsen’s Ghosts.
But by the time he reached his mid-twenties
he thought, “I’d better do some screen.” HeThe Times Magazine 45ecause Jack Lowden is a tall,
talented, nice-looking, Olivier
award-winning actor with a
growing body of acclaimed screen
work behind him, a celebrity
girlfriend – he is going out with the
four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse
Ronan – and a strong Scots Borders
accent, there is an instinct to look
him up and down and assume he
is not someone particularly burdened by self-
doubt. There is an instinct to assume he is one
of those restless young alphas you sometimes
encounter in acting who seem to have the
entire world in their crosshairs. There is an
instinct, perhaps, to assume even more.
“I met someone recently and he was like,
‘I thought you were going to be a complete
c***,’ ” he says, frowning. “And I said, ‘OK, I
can see why. But at least give me a chance.’ ”
So, let’s give him a chance. We meet for
lunch in a north London gastropub – two pints
and a plate of risotto each – because he is,
ostensibly, promoting Benediction, a Siegfried
Sassoon biopic in which the 31-year-old plays
the poet. It is an excellent, achingly sad film in
which Lowden’s Sassoon quietly absorbs
trauma after trauma: the carnage of the
Western Front; the deaths of his brother and
of his friend Wilfred Owen; a series of painful
and acrimonious romantic relationships with
other men followed by a lustless lavender
marriage; a gradual decline into loneliness and
critical obscurity. And through it all, Lowden
delivers the kind of subtle, slow-burning
performance that wins awards and sends
careers stratospheric. He really is very good.
But Lowden isn’t sure. In fact, one thing
that quickly becomes apparent in his company
is that he has as much professional self-doubt
as anybody. Possibly a bit more. “I’m very
hard on myself,” he says, and describes how
he struggles badly when forced to watch his
performances back. “You do all that work. And
you think that you’ve really researched this
person. And then you watch it and you just
think, ‘F***! That’s just me!’ ” he says, drawing
out the “meeeee”, fingertips pressing into his
cheeks. “That’s just me in a costume. And
someone’s calling me Dave or John or Steve.”
This is not wink-wink self-deprecation. Nor
is he being self-pitying: Lowden – who also
currently stars alongside Gary Oldman and
Kristin Scott Thomas in the Apple TV+ series
Slow Horses – is thoughtful, funny and self-
aware. But perhaps, if anything, he is too self-
aware. Because something about acting- standing in front of a camera and pretending
to be Dave or John or Steve – seems to really
embarrass him. “Just severe embarrassment,”
he says. The fact that he is almost always
required to ditch his own accent and perform
in another voice only adds to his discomfort
and the uneasy sense of confection. He is not
the sort of actor forever primed to drop a few
apposite Shakespeare verses into conversation.
“The idea of me doing a monologue to you
right now? I couldn’t think of anything worse.”
Plus, he continues, the inherently subjective
nature of performance makes it very hard to
know, for sure, if what he’s delivering is
genuinely any good. “My younger brother has
just been made principal dancer with the
Royal Swedish Ballet,” he explains. “And what
he does is so black and white. You can either
jump high or not.” But unlike ballet dancers or
athletes, when it comes to acting, it feels as
though effort does not always equal results.
“It’s never satisfying for you,” he says. He sips
his beer. He wonders, long-term, if he might
end up doing something else. “I really want to
get rid of that feeling. But I don’t know how.”
So, what’s going on? How do you end up
having such an uncertain relationship with the
very thing you do for a living? Lowden was, he
says, a “very, very, very shy child”. He and his
brother were both born in Chelmsford, whereB
With Gary Oldman in Slow HorsesLowden opposite Saoirse Ronan in Mary Queen of ScotsPREVIOUS SPREAD: SHUTTERSTOCK. GROOMING AND HAIR: ALEXIS DAY USING BARE MINERALS AND FUDGE HAIRCARE. JACK LOWDEN WEARS JACKET, BELSTAFF; T-SHIRT, SUNSPEL; JEANS, LEVI’S; BELT, OLIVER SPENCER. THIS PAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK, LAURENCE CENDROWICZ
‘We were doing this
scene and I told Saoirse,
“Hit me as hard as
you want.” So she did
- bang! I couldn’t move’