Jack Lowden

Is A ChArmIng mAn…

Astage veteran, Scotsman Jack Lowden’s big-screen career has already taken in several historical figures (including Tony Benn in United Kingdom), but stepping into the shoes of a pre-Smiths Morrissey in elegiac biopic England Is Mine proves his most daunting endeavour to date. “The most important thing was playing the guy on the page.”

You’re playing Morrissey before the quiff…

Yeah, it’s a portrait of him, rather than an impression. I love the fact that it stops before anything like that starts. We know the bit from there. That’s well-documented. It was more important that we focused on this guy who was quite scared by life, rather than somebody who’s gone on to be this icon.

Did you immerse yourself in his music?

The only songs in the film are the songs that we know Morrissey listened to at that time. But on weekends, when I wasn’t shooting, I had a car and I’d fuck off to the Lake District and just play Smiths tracks the whole time.

You’ve also got Dunkirk coming up…

That was insane. I’d never been on anything of that size. The cast was incredible. Even the kids that are still at drama school, some of the things they do are ridiculously exciting. I came off England Is Mine and went straight on to Dunkirk. So it was very bizarre to do that. There was a lot of hair dye involved.

And Fighting With My Family sounds very different again… Yeah, it was another world, this subculture of British wrestling. The character is the complete opposite of Steven [Patrick Morrissey] in England Is Mine. It’s based on another real-life guy called Zak Bevis, or Zak Zodiac. I met him a whole bunch of times, he’s quite a character. I put on a stone and a half in six weeks for that.