Andrew Scott

Andrew Scott 

21 October 1976

An Irish actor. 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. 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.

Andrew Scott received the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre, an IFTA award, a British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actor, awards for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor consecutively BBC Audio Drama Awards, and nominated as Best Lead Actor for his role in The Stag at the 2014 Irish Film and Television Awards.

As actor

• Korea (1995)
• Budgie (1995)
• Drinking Crude (1997)
• Miracle at Midnight (1998)
• Saving Private Ryan (1998)
• The Tale of Sweety Barrett (1998)
• The American (1998)
• Longitude (2000)
• Nora (2000)
• I Was the Cigarette Girl (2001)
• Band of Brothers (2001)
• Killing Hitler (2003)
• Dead Bodies (2003)
• My Life in Film (2004)
• The Quatermass Experiment (2005)
• Nuclear Secrets (2007)
• John Adams (2008)
• Little White Lie (2008)
• Anton Chekhov's The Duel (2009)
• Chasing Cotards (2010)
• Silent Things (2010)
• Foyle's War (2010)
• Lennon Naked (2010)
• Sherlock (2010-...)
• Garrow's Law (2010)
• The Hour (2011)
• Sea Wall (2012)
• Blackout (2012)
• The Scapegoat (2012)
• The Town (2012)
• The Stag (2013)
• Dates (2013)
• Locke (2014)
• Pride (2014)
• Jimmy's Hall (2014)
• Spectre (2015)
• Victor Frankenstein (2015)
• The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses (2016)
• Earth's Seasonal Secrets (2016)
• Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)
• Swallows and Amazons (2016)
• Denial (2016)
• This Beautiful Fantastic (2016)
• Steel Country (2016)
• Handsome Devil (2016)
• The Hope Rooms (2016)

Quotations

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I am a private person; I think that's important if you're an actor. But there's a difference between privacy and secrecy, and I'm not a secretive person.

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I'm not a big guy for research. You've got to take a risk.

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I do sometimes play characters that are a bit ambiguous. You've got to be brave about that sort of stuff. I like the sense of people not feeling too secure, not immediately knowing what they have in front of them.

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I don't like it when people ask actors to work for free - on the fringe - as if it's some kind of virtue. That annoys me - actors should be paid well.

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It's a thrilling world, and people really like stories about secrets, which is the essence of a spy drama.

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Life's too short.

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People get distracted by box-office figures and take jobs because they think it will advance their careers.

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The kind of actors I admire move through different characters and genres.

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I find any sort of acting that doesn't have any humor in it is mind-numbingly boring. 'Serious acting' is the kind of acting that I don't ever respond to.

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I have a terrible superstition of writing things down.

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I never make a note of anything; I never even write a plot down.

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I want to keep everything balanced. That's why it's important not to have too much fanfare.

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If one story becomes too hot, then you can't forget it. As an actor, you want to remain fluid.

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It's very difficult to make comedy work; I think it's a very underrated genre.

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One of my favourite parts of acting is the clothes that you get to wear, because it's very important.

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Really I just want to get on with my job, which is to pretend to be lots of different people. Simple as that.

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I had a really fantastic dialect coach that I worked very well with, and I was constantly surprised by the different intonations that the Russian dialect has.

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It sounds maybe a little old fashioned, but the parts I want to play and I do play, you don't want to inject too much of your own personality. What you sacrifice then is a slight mystery.

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