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.
Lowden was born on 2 June 1990 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, Lowden 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]
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]
Onscreen, in 2012 he appeared in the ITV drama Mrs Biggs as Alan Wright, who has an affair with Charmian Biggs and gets her pregnant. In 2013, he played the pivotal role of the lead character's son, Adam, in the television series The Tunnel.[34] The series is a British/French crime-drama co-production, and aired in the UK and in France; in the summer of 2016 it aired on PBS in the U.S. He also had a sizable role as a young British soldier in the 2014 film '71, which takes place in Belfast in 1971 during the Northern Ireland conflict.[35]
He performed Orestes in Electra at the Old Vic in the autumn of 2014. The production starred Kristin Scott Thomas as his sister Electra, and Diana Quick played their mother Clytemnestra. Previews began 22 September, the official opening was 1 October, and the run continued in a limited engagement through to 20 December 2014.[44][45]
On television he starred as one of the two leads in the 2014 World War I BBC drama series The Passing Bells. It is the story of two youths, one from Germany and one from the UK, who enlist as soldiers at the beginning of the war.[46][47]
2016–present
Lowden portrayed Nikolai Rostov, one of the main characters, in the 2016 BBC miniseries War & Peace.[7][48] The 6-part miniseries, which was broadcast around the world and positively reviewed,[49][50] garnered Lowden the most exposure he had had thus far in his career.[7][51]
In April 2016 he was a finalist in the entertainment category at the 11th Young Scot Awards.[56] In November 2016, the UK arts and entertainment magazine The List featured Lowden as one of The Hot 100 2016.[57]
He co-starred with Martin McCann in a Scottish thriller, Calibre (2018), which began filming in November 2016, debuted at the 2018 Edinburgh International Film Festival, and was released globally on Netflix on 29 June 2018.[63][64][65] Guy Lodge in Variety wrote of his performance, "[A] lead performance of through-the-wringer commitment by rising Scots star Jack Lowden. ... An Olivier Award-winning stage actor now settling into a quietly potent, empathetic screen presence, Lowden impressively holds it together through all these key changes, even when his character emphatically does not."[66] Lowden won the 2018British Academy Scotland Award for Best Film Actor for the performance.[67]
In February 2019 Lowden teamed up with Beta Cinema to form his own production company, Reiver Pictures, based in Edinburgh.[74] This led to the production of a psychological thriller, Kindred, in which Lowden also starred alongside Tamara Lawrance and Fiona Shaw.[74] He portrayed Siegfried Sassoon in the 2022 biopic Benediction.
Since 2018 he has been in a relationship with Irish actress Saoirse Ronan, his co-star in Mary Queen of Scots.[84] An Instagram post in July 2023 sparked speculation that they are engaged.[85] The Irish Independent reported in July 2024 that they married in Edinburgh.[86]
Wood, Gareth. Review: War and Peace: S1 Ep2 – "Austerlitz" 12 January 2016. S1 Ep3 – "Renewal". 19 January 2016. The Metropolist. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
