Jack Lowden talks to Janet Christie about his nomination for a Rising Star Bafta

His Rising Star nomination for the Baftas recognises the direction of Jack Lowden’s career since first catching the eye on stage in Black Watch. Now flourishing on screen in diverse roles from Lord Darnley in Mary Queen of Scots to a wrestler in Fighting with My Family, the Borders-born actor talks to Janet Christie about acting, activism and stepping behind the camera

Jack Lowden is not one for sitting still. He’s itching to have an “ogle” around Leith Theatre in Edinburgh, but in the meantime sit still he does, upstairs in a flowerfilled function suite, talking about how chuffed he is to be shortlisted for a Bafta EE Rising Star. The only award chosen by the public, given to rising talent who’ve captured our imagination, it will see the Edinburgh-based Lowden heading to London for the ceremony on 2 February.

“I’ve got no idea why I’ve been nominated now,” says the 29-yearold, in his warm Borders accent. “I’ve been doing this for about ten years, but it’s really wonderful. It’s a very hotly contested thing and it’s lovely for it to be now, because you feel like you’ve earned it a bit more. It’s an honour.

“And it does have an effect on future job prospects for us. When awards highlight young talent it can only help everybody get into rooms they couldn’t get into and that’s what awards should be used for.”

You can see why Bafta have shortlisted him as one of the bright lights of 2020, along with Awkwafina, Kaitlyn Dever, Kelvin Harrison Jr and Micheal Ward as Borders boy Lowden’s career has been on an upwards trajectory ever since he caught the attention in The National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch in 2011.

More acclaim followed when he won an Olivier Award for Ibsen’s Ghosts, and he moved into film and TV, in the BBC’S epic miniseries War and Peace, playing a plantation owner in The Long Song, the country’s first golfing superhero Tommy Morris in Tommy’s Honour, then clinched Best Actor from Bafta Scotland for chilling Netflix film, Calibre .Hewon praise for his role as a fighter pilot in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk , as real life wrestler Zac ‘Zodiac’ Bevis in Stephen Merchant’s Fighting with My Family, and brought a new complexity to Lord Darnley in Mary Queen of Scots with Saoirse Ronan.

“I loved playing Darnley,” he says. “Obviously he was an arse but it comes from somewhere, some deepseated insecurity. It’s fun to play weak characters. I’ve no interest in playing the finished product kind, it’s boring. I’m not a finished product and I struggle playing them. But when they have great big flaws, I grab onto them like, and run with it.”

This year we’ll see him on the big screen in Fonzo, playing an FBI agent to Tom Hardy’s Al Capone, and alongside John Boyega and Letitia Wright (previous EE Rising Star winners) in Oscar-winner Steve (Twelve Years a Slave) Mcqueen’s Small Axe, set in London’s West Indian community, for the BBC.

In Fonzo, Lowden’s FBI agent hails from Boston, a suggestion that came from the actor himself.

“I don’t know why I did that,” he says and laughs. “Made it difficult for myself, but I’ve always loved that accent, that sort of ‘packed the ka in the ka pak’. When they thought it was a great idea I thought now I’ve got to do it, oh christ.

“And Small Axe with Steve Mcqueen – he’s my favourite director, the best I’ve worked with. Because he’s got an incredible instinct for anything false. He also knows how to push actors but not humiliate them.

“When I first started I thought in a sort of arrogant way that actors were fannies and spoilt and you just turn up and say something, but the longer I worked, and then getting a chance to produce and see the other side, they really are the magical bit.

“Because a film set is like a building site, all these guys walking aboot with North Face jackets with lighting rig and sound stuff, and then the actor comes out in the middle and someone says ‘right, you’ve lost your daughter, go’. It’s difficult, and for Steve, his priority is the actor and the story, bang, straight, everybody’s told to bugger off until he’s sorted it out. He’s amazing, he pushed me, which I love.”

Lowden plays Ian Macdonald, the radical barrister who advised the Mangrove Nine, the defendants in Britain’s most influential Black Power trial from 1970-72. They were standing trial on charges arising from violent clashes with the police as they campaigned to defend Notting Hill’s black community from police racism.

As well as working towards being able to pick the jobs he works on – his definition of success as an actor – Lowden has always wanted to step behind the camera.

“I enjoy acting, but I’m very restless. I’m no’ very good at standing aboot daein’ nothin’ and the thing as an actor when you’re used for about four minutes a day, drives me mental. I’ve always been jealous of the people that are running around busy.

“That’s why I started this very, very small production company, Reiver Pictures with the producer Dominic Norris, basically to trap myself into actually making a go of ideas that come up.”

Such an idea is Cordivae ,a psychological thriller, shot in Ireland and as well as co-producing it, he stars with Fiona Shaw and Tamara Lawrence, who he worked with in The Long Song.

“It’s this cool sort of twist on Rosemary’s Baby kind of film, really weird. I played a creepy weirdo, which was great fun. It’s all about paranoia, psychosis in pregnancy, and being manipulated,” he says, of the film which they’re hoping to get into a film festival and released this year.

“It’s my first film and was a baptism of fire. It’s no’ easy! But I loved problem solving, and that acting became secondary. I almost forgot when it was my turn to go on camera. It was great to be doing everything from jumping in the car to go and get cappuccinos for folk, holding something, throwing something that needed throwing. It was just great, like actually film-making, instead of just turning up and mincing about, which was what I just felt I’d been doing for ten years.”

Lowden doesn’t really think acting is “just mincing about”, but he does adhere to what he calls “the typically Scottish thing where you’re taught to take the work seriously, but not yourself.”

With his blue eyes, fair hair and brows, dressed in black jeans and jumper, green puffer jacket and hat, he blends in easily outside on the