Photo: Berlination / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
Last night, the London Film Festival opened with a film about an actor who died at forty, played by an actor about to turn fifty. Andrew Scott — thirteen days from his fiftieth birthday — stars as Ian Charleson in Elsinore, and the early word from the premiere is the kind actors wait decades to hear.
It is the latest peak in a career that has been quietly, stubbornly building toward this for thirty years.
Born October 21, 1976, in Dublin, Ireland, Scott was the middle child in a Churchtown family — his father worked at an employment agency, his mother taught art. At Gonzaga College, a boys’ school in Ranelagh, he was embarrassed by a slight lisp and struggled to fit in. Acting classes became the place where the words came out right. His first screen appearance, at fifteen, was a television commercial for porridge.
The Villain Everyone Loved
For most actors, one iconic role is the ceiling. For Scott, it was the floor.
As Jim Moriarty in the BBC’s Sherlock (2010–2017), he took a Victorian footnote and turned him into the most magnetic villain on television — all coiled menace and camp delight. The performance won him a BAFTA, and for years afterward he was “the Moriarty guy,” which is both a compliment and a trap. Hollywood knew exactly what to do with him: cast him as the creepy one. Spectre (2015) put him in a Bond film. It did not put him in the conversation.
The Priest Who Broke the Internet
Then came six episodes that changed everything. As the priest in the second series of Fleabag (2019) — the “Hot Priest” — Scott did something nearly impossible: he made restraint sexy and faith funny, often in the same scene. The will-they-won’t-they with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s heroine became a cultural event. He won the Critics’ Choice Award, and suddenly the conversation wasn’t about villains anymore. It was about range.
What the television audience didn’t always see was that Scott had never left the stage. He won his first Olivier Award in 2005 and his second — Best Actor — in 2019 for Present Laughter. His Hamlet (2018) and one-man Vanya (2024) confirmed what theatergoers had known for years: this was one of the finest stage actors of his generation, moonlighting as a TV star.
The Leading Man, At Last
The last few years have been a slow coronation. His lonely screenwriter in All of Us Strangers (2023) earned him a Golden Globe nomination. His Tom Ripley in Netflix’s Ripley (2024) — all watchful stillness and quiet menace — brought Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and a Peabody Award. The creepy-guy typecasting was dead. In its place: leading man.
Elsinore
Which brings us to last night. In Elsinore, Scott plays Ian Charleson — the Chariots of Fire star who, diagnosed with AIDS in late-1980s London, performed Hamlet at the National Theatre while dying. Charleson completed twenty-four grueling performances and died in 1990 at forty. Scott doesn’t just star; he produced the film. On the red carpet, he called Charleson a man of “great zest for life” who deserved to be remembered for how he lived, not only how he died. The early critical response has been rapturous, with awards talk already beginning.
Why Andrew Scott Matters Now
There is a particular kind of actor who gets better the longer you watch — who treats a porridge commercial, a Bond villain, a priest, and Hamlet as the same job done with the same seriousness. Scott spent his thirties being underestimated and his forties proving the underestimation wrong.
He turns fifty on October 21. The role of a lifetime arrived thirteen days early.
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