Andrew Scott is an Irish film, television, and stage actor.
He received the 2005 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate
Theatre for the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs production of A Girl in a Car with a Man, and an IFTA
award for the film Dead Bodies.
Scott's notable television roles have included Paul McCartney in the BBC television drama
Lennon Naked and arch-villain Jim Moriarty in Sherlock, for which he was awarded the
2012 British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Early years Scott attended Gonzaga College, a private
Jesuit Catholic school on the south side of Dublin.
He took Saturday classes at a drama school for children, and appeared in two ads on Irish
television.
At seventeen he was chosen for a starring role in his first film, Korea.
Scott dropped out of his drama degree at Trinity College, Dublin to join Dublin’s Abbey Theatre.
His father worked in an employment agency and mother was an art teacher.
He once stated to the London evening standard magazine that he always had a "healthy obsession"
with acting.
Career After filming a small part in Steven Spielberg’s
Saving Private Ryan, Scott worked with film and theater director Karel Reisz in a Gate
Theatre, Dublin, production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night taking the role of Edmund,
the younger son, in the Eugene O'Neill play about a tortured American family in the early
part of the 20th century.
He won Actor of the Year at the Independent/Spirit of Life Awards and received an Irish Times
Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Scott appeared in the small part of Michael Blodgett in the film Nora, with Ewan McGregor,
and in a television adaptation of Henry James’s The American, alongside Diana Rigg and Matthew
Modine, before making his London theatre debut in Conor McPherson’s Dublin Carol with Brian
Cox at the Royal Court Theatre.
He was then cast in the BAFTA winning drama Longitude, opposite Michael Gambon, and the
multi-award winning HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.
Scott has described the working atmosphere on Band of Brothers as "awful".
In 2004 he was named one of European Film Promotions' Shooting Stars.
After starring in My Life in Film for the BBC, he received his first Olivier award for
his role in A Girl in a Car with a Man at The Royal Court, and the Theatregoers' Choice
Award for his performance in the National Theatre’s Aristocrats.
He then created the roles of the twin brothers in the original Royal Court production of
Christopher Shinn’s Dying City, which was later nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
In 2006, he made his Broadway debut opposite Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy in the Music
Box Theater production of The Vertical Hour written by David Hare and directed by Sam
Mendes, for which he was nominated for a Drama League Award.
In 2008, Scott appeared in the award-winning HBO miniseries John Adams, opposite Laura
Linney and Paul Giamatti.
Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter, played his sister.
In 2009, he appeared in Sea Wall, a one-man show written especially for him by Olivier
award-winning playwright Simon Stephens.
He starred alongside Ben Whishaw, Katherine Parkinson and Paul Jesson in a sell-out run
of Cock at the Royal Court in late 2009, a production which won an Olivier Award in 2010.
He has recently been seen in Foyle's War as a prisoner determined to allow himself to
hang for a crime he may not have committed, which was described in Slant magazine as a
"standout performance."
Other film appearances included a role in Chasing Cotards, the short film, Silent Things
and as Paul McCartney in the BBC film Lennon Naked.
He also starred in the critically acclaimed 2010 film Anton Chekhov's The Duel.
He is most well-known as Sherlock Holmes' nemesis Moriarty in the BBC drama Sherlock,
and he had a guest role in the second series of Garrow's Law playing a gay man on trial
for sodomy.
In 2010 he appeared with Lisa Dillon and Tom Burke in the Old Vic comedy about a three-way
love affair, Noël Coward's Design for Living.
In 2011 he played the lead role of Julian in Ben Power's adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's
epic Emperor and Galilean at the National Theatre in London.
He had a part in BBC2's original drama The Hour as Adam Le Ray, a failed, secretly gay,
actor.
He won a BAFTA in 2012 for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Moriarty in Sherlock.
In 2013, Scott won the IFTA, the Irish television award for Best Supporting Actor, for the same
role.
In addition to his stage and TV work, Scott is also known for his voice acting in radio
plays and audio books, such as the roles of Jay Gatsby in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
and Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's Ulysses.
His recent theatrics venture includes Birdland where he plays the role of rock star Paul
who is at the zenith of his career portraying a rock god on verge of crack-up.
The play is written by Simon Stephens and directed by Carrie Cracknell performed at
the Royal Court Theaters.
Personal life Scott is gay, and has commented that "mercifully,
these days people don't see being gay as a character flaw.
But nor is it a virtue, like kindness.
Or a talent, like playing the banjo.
It's just a fact.
Of course, it's part of my make-up, but I don't want to trade on it."
On being asked as to how he prepared his accent for his BBC2 drama 'Legacy' where he plays
a KGB spy he said “There isn’t a huge amount of footage of Russians speaking English
as a second language, so I started looking at Vladimir Putin videos on YouTube.
But then Putin introduced anti-gay legislation this summer – so, being a gay person, I
switched to Rudolf Nureyev videos instead.
It was another Nureyev defection of sorts!”
Stage Filmography
Radio plays and readings of books 2003 – Gil in David Varela's one-off comedy
Olivia's Line with Kelly Reilly 2009 – Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's
Slaughterhouse-Five 2012 – Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby 2012 – Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's
Ulysses 2012 – Charles Darnay in Charles Dickens'
A Tale of Two Cities 2013 – Narrator in Cassandra Clare's Vampires,
Scones, and Edmund Herondale Assorted short stories such as The Rachel
Papers, The Wire, Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Angel of Covent Garden
et al. Poems by Pablo Neruda, Robert Frost, Emily
Dickinson, Jack Kerouac, Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage and others.
References
External links Andrew Scott at the Internet Movie Database
Andrew Scott Watch 'Sea Wall' online.
Accessed 14 May 2012.
Andrew Scott Gay Star news official website.
http:www.gaystarnews.comsherlock-star-comes-out-officially-gay181113 The Royal Court Birdland performces.
http:www.royalcourttheatre.combirdland/?tab=2 http:www.standard.co.uktheatre/life-after-moriarty-andrew-scott-interview-9232745.html