The Times Magazine 47didn’t struggle for roles – he appeared in the
BBC’s adaptation of War & Peace, Christopher
Nolan’s Dunkirk and played a young Morrissey
in the singer’s biopic England Is Mine – but he
struggled with the change of pace. “The
pedestrian element of film sets kicks in.
Because film is much more technical and
takes much longer. The buzz is not there.”
On some level, I think he’s still struggling
with the fact that very little in his career so
far has been quite as exciting – or quite as
profound – as his teenage nights under the
lights at the Galashiels Amateur Operatic
Society. Knowing that you’ve smashed a song
and dance number in front of a packed village
hall is more cathartic than doing take 23 of a
few lines of dialogue to a camera on a silent
set. For a long time, whenever he would get
drunk, Lowden would force his mates to watch
old Gene Kelly or Bob Fosse dance routines
on YouTube. “I’m a music hall actor,” he says,
“in this very technical profession.”
Still, it’s not all bad. If he hadn’t got into
film then he’d never have met his girlfriend.
In 2018, Lowden appeared in Mary Queen of
Scots opposite Saoirse Ronan, now 28. He was
playing Lord Darnley, an English nobleman
who marries the Scottish queen. It sounds
quite a romantic backdrop against which to
meet and then fall in love with your other
half. Until, that is, you watch the film and
realise that the relationship between the two
was violent and abusive. There is a particularly
unpleasant sex scene, the preparation for
which saw Lowden and Ronan – not yet a
real-life couple – throw some ideas around.
“It’s this scene where she tries to get him to
basically impregnate her. And we were like,
what if you started hitting me? That was back
when I’d first met her, so I went, ‘Yeah, hit me
as hard as you want,’ ” he says, fixing me with
his eyes and dropping his voice half an octave.
So Ronan hit him – “F***ing bang!” – and
when he returned to his trailer, he discovered
he had a gigantic blood bruise across his
chest and shoulders: “I couldn’t move.” The
following day, she asked if he was OK, to
which he could only manage a noncommittal,
high-pitched noise. He chuckles. “It was a
strange way to meet.”
Workplace romances are excruciating, I say.
Too much like being back at school. Lowden
disagrees. “But that’s what makes it fun.” He
and Ronan now divide their time between
London, Scotland, the US and wherever their
jobs take them. “I was up in Orkney recently,
on a recce for a film that I’m going to do with
Saoirse,” he says. “And I was just in Australia,
actually, where she’s shooting something.”
Aside from all her industry experience,
which is helpful, he says that he sometimes
asks her to help him do the audition “self-
tapes” he is often required to produce when
up for a part. He will stand in front of a digital
camera, delivering his lines, and she will stand
off-screen, reading all the other parts.
“She’s one of the best actors in the world
and she’ll be giving twice the performance
that I’m giving on camera. It’s hilarious.”
Last year, ahead of England and Scotland’s
Euro 2020 fixture, Lowden and Ronan posted
a short, homemade video online in which the
pair of them recreated a pre-battle scene from
Braveheart: “I felt it was something that needed
to be done to mark the occasion.” Lowden is
a supporter of Scottish independence. He had
been living in Leith prior to getting a part in
Slow Horses, which required him to relocate to
London two years back. “But I want to move
back as soon as I can.” It winds him up when
English people, like me, tell him that they
always want Scotland to do well in their
sporting fixtures. “Like, you don’t have to say
that,” he says, shrugging indifferently. “Want
us to lose. Whatever. We don’t care.”
Recently, he was at Murrayfield watching
Scotland host England in the Six Nations, and
he was reprimanded by a fellow Scot for booing
God Save the Queen. “He turned around and
went, ‘Come on, man.’ And I said, ‘No! This is
the problem! It’s got to be difficult for them to
come here. We’ve got to create an atmosphere.
What’s the point in being polite?’ ”
A little later he revisits the subject, a little
gingerly, just to clarify that he was talking
about anthem-booing in a purely sporting
context and that he genuinely doesn’t want to
upset anybody. He has friends from south of
the border, he says, who can dish it out everybit as much as he can. “Two of my best mates
are English, and we always go and watch
rugby together. And you’ve got to have a sense
of humour around that.”
One thing he genuinely does seem to enjoy
about his job is hanging out with actors. “They
are great people to have around a dinner table.
Great people to talk to. They’re very trusting,
very quickly, great people to confide in. If you
ever have difficulty opening up, find an actor.
You’re not going to shock an actor. Well,
you’re not going to shock a British actor.”
For someone like Lowden, who is naturally
shy, you can see the appeal. For a while, in
his mid-twenties, he says that he made a
concerted effort to be more outgoing.
“I looked around and thought, ‘The world
wants a gobby person. I’ve got to have a bit of
oomph about me,’ ” he says. “So I sort of tried
that on for a bit. Like a coat. And it went fine.
I wasn’t an arsehole. But it felt like I was
having to put a lot of effort into it.”
Now he’s back to being quiet, which suits
him better and is probably for the best.
“Particularly in a work environment. The
people you want to work with again aren’t
necessarily the loudest in the room.”
He’s turned down big money for parts he
didn’t fancy. His dad, who works for the Bank
of Scotland, never understands. “He says,
‘Why would you do that?’ But I’ve never
regretted it.” His social media channels are not
exactly the slick shop windows of many other
young actors, and his passion for railways and
service stations is instantly discernible. “I’m a
massive fan of service stations. Wetherby on
the A1...” he says dreamily, before finishing his
second pint. He is not aware of any intense
online fandom, although there is a small but
committed group of Jack Lowden superfans
who will come and watch him perform on
stage. “There’s about five of them, lovely lasses,
mainly from England. They came 25 times
when I did Measure for Measure at the
Donmar. It was like, wow, you must be minted.”
He has no concrete professional goals or
ambitions. “There isn’t anything where I’m
like, I absolutely have to play that,” he says,
before gathering his stuff together to leave and
catch a train to Scotland. “I just want to play
a role where I feel, ‘Wow, you really f***ing
pushed yourself.’ Because only I know when
I’ve really pushed myself. Because sometimes
I think I have done, but then I get home at
night and think... ‘Nah, you really didn’t. You
just sort of did that thing you always do.’ ”
He smiles and sighs. Oh well. It’s hard not
to hope that he finds what he’s after. In the
meantime, though, we can’t complain. That
thing he always does is great. Better than
most. Fingers crossed, he’ll see that soon. nSlow Horses is available to stream on Apple TV+.
Benediction will be in cinemas from May 20‘I thought, “The world
wants a gobby person.
I need a bit of oomph
about me.” So I sort of
tried that on for a bit’
Playing Siegfried Sassoon in Benediction, with Kate Phillips