Andrew Scott

Andrew Scott (born October 21, 1976, Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish actor known for his carefully constructed performances on stage and screen. Critics and fans enjoyed his portrayals of the psychopath Jim Moriarty in Sherlock (2010–17), the irreverent priest in the second season of Fleabag (2019), and the mercurial Tom Ripley in Ripley (2024).

Early life and first screen role

Scott is the middle child of Jim Scott, who worked as a manager at an employment agency, and Nora Scott (née Boyle), an art teacher. He has an elder sister, Sarah, and a younger sister, Hannah. They were raised in Churchtown, a southern suburb of Dublin. While Andrew Scott attended Gonzaga College, a private Roman Catholic school for boys in nearby Ranelagh, he struggled to socialize with his peers because he was embarrassed by a slight lisp. He nonetheless found opportunities for expression in acting classes and youth theater programs. By 1991 he had had his first appearance on-screen, in a television commercial for Flahavan’s porridge.

Early acting career

Despite his affinity for acting, Scott graduated from secondary school with the intention to pursue painting. His work showed enough promise to secure him a scholarship to an art school, but, on the day the 17-year-old Scott began classes, he was cast in the Irish feature film Korea (1995). Scott quit school to play Eamon Doyle, an Irish boy whose father, John (played by Donal Donnelly), wants to send him to the United States. Following production, Scott enrolled at Trinity College Dublin to study drama, but he left after six months, having found the courses to be too focused on theory. He then joined Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, and over the next few years he distinguished himself onstage in such productions as Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (1998) at the Gate Theatre, Dublin. He also netted a few small movie roles, including a bit part as a nameless soldier in Steven Spielberg’s epic war film Saving Private Ryan (1998).

Success on the stage in the 2000s

In the late 1990s Scott moved to London for a six-month job but ended up staying. He garnered supporting roles in the television miniseries Longitude (2000) and Band of Brothers (2001), but his real triumphs came on the stage. Scott acted in at least one play every year for most of the 2000s. Roles included Mark, the apprentice to Brian Cox’s undertaker John Plunkett in a 2000 production of Conor McPherson’s Dublin Carol at the Royal Court Theatre, London; twin brothers in the 2001 production of Christopher Shinn’s The Coming World at Soho Theatre, London; and Angel, a character based on Frank Wedekind’s Lulu, in the 2002 all-male production of Peter Gill’s Original Sin at Sheffield Crucible, England. Scott’s turn as Alex, a self-absorbed gay man, in A Girl in a Car with a Man (2004) at the Royal Court earned the young actor his first Laurence Olivier Award. He made his Broadway debut playing Philip Lucas, who takes his girlfriend (played by Julianne Moore) to visit his estranged father (Bill Nighy) in The Vertical Hour (2006) at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. Scott then starred as Alex in Sea Wall, a one-man play that premiered in 2008 at the Bush Theatre, London, which playwright Simon Stephens specifically wrote for him (Scott reprised the role 10 years later at the Old Vic theater, London). In 2009 he starred alongside another up-and-coming actor, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, in Roaring Trade at Soho Theatre.

Sherlock and other roles from 2010

In 2010 Scott won a second Laurence Olivier Award, which he shared with actor Ben Whishaw, for their performance as lovers in Mike Bartlett’s Cock (2009), a play in which one of the pair falls in love with a woman. Scott also starred as the romantically entangled civil servant Laevsky in the feature film Anton Chekhov’s The Duel (2010), which received positive reviews. That year’s triumphs continued when the actor appeared in an episode of Sherlock, the BBC series that brought the iconic character Sherlock Holmes (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) into the 21st century. Scott played the criminal mastermind Jim Moriarty, who was based on Holmes’s traditional antagonist, Professor James Moriarty. Unlike actors who had previously portrayed the classic villain, Scott performed Moriarty as a psychopath whose playful persona occasionally gave way to face-warping, voice-distorting fury. The unusual interpretation thrilled viewers and impressed critics, who rewarded Scott for his continuing depiction in Sherlock’s second season with a 2012 BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Award) for best supporting actor. Scott continued to appear in the role that made him a recognizable face around the world until the series ended in 2017.

Roles on-screen and onstage in the 2010s

Scott’s new fame meant he soon had a wide selection of film and television projects from which to choose. One offer he accepted was the part of the bookshop owner Gethin Roberts in Pride, a movie about gay and lesbian activists who supported the British miners’ strike of 1984. By the time the film was released in 2014, Scott had revealed to the media that he himself is gay. Another, much more high-profile role came from filmmaker Sam Mendes, who previously directed Scott in The Vertical Hour. For Mendes’s second James Bond film, Spectre (2015), he cast the actor in the role of Max (“C”) Denbigh, Bond’s new (and younger) boss. Scott also had supporting roles in the films Victor Frankenstein (2015) alongside Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy, Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, and Denial (2016) with Rachel Weisz and Timothy Spall.

In addition to these appearances and others, Scott began working as a voice actor, reading for radio plays, audiobooks, and animated series. Even so, he kept one foot firmly planted on the stage, consistently appearing in plays throughout the 2010s, including in starring roles in productions of Henrik Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean (2011) at the National Theatre, London, and Stephens’s Birdland at the Royal Court. In 2017 Scott delivered a particularly lauded performance as Hamlet at the Almeida, London, earning a nomination for a third Laurence Olivier Award.

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Fleabag

Despite his successes, Scott was often identified with Moriarty until Waller-Bridge cast him in the second season (2019) of her very successful streaming series Fleabag. He portrayed the love interest of the lead character (played by Waller-Bridge)—a man who happens to be a Catholic priest. The role was a study in contrasts, a church minister with strong religious convictions who nevertheless uses foul language, smokes and drinks heavily, and fails to control his sex drive. Scott turned in a performance that had fans calling him “hot priest” and that redefined him in the minds of viewers.

Roles from the late 2010s and early ’20s

Scott finished the decade by reteaming with Mendes in the 2019 war film 1917; starring as a rideshare driver who takes a hostage in an episode (2019) of Netflix’s Black Mirror, for which he received an Emmy nomination); and winning a third Laurence Olivier Award, this time for his performance as Garry Eserdine, the lead character in Noël Coward’s Present Laughter at the Old Vic. He also began playing the mysterious Col. John Parry/Jobari/Stanislaus Grumman in the HBO adaptation (2019–22) of Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials.

Scott began the 2020s with amusing performances as the eccentric Lord Merlin in the Amazon miniseries The Pursuit of Love (2021), which was based on Nancy Mitford’s 1945 novel, and as the indolent Lord Rollo, father to the title character, in Catherine Called Birdy (2022). He also took on more leading-man roles on-screen, starring opposite Paul Mescal in the romantic fantasy film All of Us Strangers (2023). The movie made Scott the first actor to win the London Critics’ Circle prizes for both film and theater in the same year. He took the theater award for playing all eight characters in Vanya (2023), a one-man version of Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London. In 2024 Scott assumed the role of the antihero Tom Ripley in Ripley, Netflix’s stylish adaption of The Talented Mr. Ripley, which was Patricia Highsmith’s first novel featuring the character. The miniseries was critically praised, receiving 13 Emmy nominations, including a nod to Scott (it won four awards, notably for directing and cinematography).