Jack Lowden is the guy who always answers in style. Too much, especially for interview standards where wide margins of discretion are desirable. If you ask him to what extent the work done in the successful series Slow Horses(Apple +, second and third seasons already announced), an antiglamorous tale of the universe of very shabby and outcast English spies who inhabit Slough House, has prepared it for a possible audition for the next 007 (“But it will take time” revealed Barbara Broccoli), he replies: “Slow Horses it’s MI5… », internal counter-intelligence. Not relevant.
Sheila Atim and Jack Lowden, the Throphée Chopard winners at the latest Cannes film festival. (Photo by Pascal Le segretain / Getty Images)
Yet Jack Lowden, awarded together with his colleague Sheila Atim at the last Cannes Film Festival with the Throphée Chopard which every year identifies two emerging talents among the actors, he has nothing of the radicalism of someone who takes the character home in the evening. And when she says, with a light that looks like sacred fire in her eyes, that “it’s really all about stage presence,” he’s not putting it down hard. On the contrary: “I like being up there, I like making people laugh.” Simple things. How the choice to be an actor after watching too long a vhs of Lord of the Dance with Michael Flatley as a kid along with his brother Calum. Flatley is the Nureyev of Irish dance, a discipline in which the two Scottish brothers aspired to compete: “We were obsessed with it.” Today Calum is principal dancer of the Royal Swedish Ballet, “he was phenomenal, I was poor, very poor,” admits Jack. “Almost without my noticing it, they had relegated me to the role of storyteller while everyone else was dancing. There I understood that it was better if I measured myself with words and not with my feet ».
Jack Lowden from rural Scotland to the theater
Raised in rural Scotland, Jack Lowden graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and only two years later wins the Olivier Award for the interpretation of Osvald in Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen. Pass by Nikolaj Rostov from the TV miniseries War and peace to Morrissey, the lead singer of the Smiths in the film England is mine. Work with the authors – Terence Davies in Benedictionportrait of the poet Siegfried Sassoon, e on the set of Mary Queen of Scots in 2018 he met Saoirse Ronan, his partner ever since.
With Saoirse Ronan in Mary Queen of Scots.
«But that first time on stage represented for me the moment in which everything was decided, I immediately loved that feeling, it all has to do with being in that place, I love it and I will always love it. Even at the awards ceremony, when they gave me the microphone for the speech I said to myself: “This is my favorite part” ».
Theater, first love
The overwhelming desire of the actors to be watched and loved by the greatest number of people?
From an early age I wanted to make people laugh. It made me feel strong. But it’s not the same in front of the camera. Nobody on the sets wants to laugh or feel emotions, They are all very serious and focused. On stage, on the other hand, it’s pure pleasure. The audience asks you: “Do something for me, let me try something, challenge me.” And laughter is the biggest challenge.
In England the border between theater and cinema is porous for actors, in Italy it is much less so.
In almost all the films I’ve made in England, my favorite part is the actors, more than the director. Because they come from the theater and they don’t take themselves seriously. They take work very seriously, but they never take it. In between takes they are really themselves, not their characters.
Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden at the London premiere of the “Slow Horses” series (Photo by David M. Benett / Dave Benett / Getty Images for Apple).
Isn’t Gary Oldman a star?
Nooo. Gary is overdosed on camaraderie, the pleasure shared between friends and colleagues. There is no difference in class or age when you are on stage or in the dressing rooms. Much depends on the training we receive, there are no make-up artists and hairdressers in the theater, you have to learn to get by on your own, the atmosphere that is created between the actors is one of great collaboration. When you are on a set, however, you lose your independence in the fragmentation of tasks. Besides, there’s always a lot of money involved, which means a lot of nervousness.
But yours is an endogamous world: you hang out with each other, you fall in love with each other. With her partner Saoirse Ronan, Irish, Celtic like her, you have created a production company.
Three years ago, making a small film in Scotland, Kindred, I realized that I wanted to produce, I tried to learn quickly and deciding to do it with Saoirse was automatic. When I read Amy Liptrot’s novel during the lockdown, The Outrun (In the extreme islandsin Italy Guanda publishes it, ed) I realized that this was the movie we had to make. And Saoirse plays it.
With girlfriend Saoirse Ronan at the Australian Open. (Photo by Graham Denholm / Getty Images)
Orkney Islands, very romantic and very windy place.
Much. The crew in fact hate him. But if I could always film in Scotland I would be happy.
Will you do more Scottish films? Many have come from outside to tell your story, Mel Gibson was considered for one season a sort of Scottish patriot for Braveheart. Now she lives in London, but …
I have no choice, but my bond with my land is very strong. I see her as Tilda Swinton and how Sean Connery saw her on independence. Until 2014, when there was the referendum on separation from the United Kingdom, I had never formulated a political thought on the issue, but that was an extraordinary moment, a great energy was released that made us young people politically aware, before we were. In Scotland you can vote at 16 and what makes us different has been clear to us ever since we were children. The differences between us and the rest of the UK are many and they are beautiful. It’s wonderful that there is a place that brings them all together, but this has created a self-esteem problem for us. As a Scotsman, I have always had to fight for self-confidence and as I did, the Scottish nation had to do so too. History tells us that we are not good at being together, it would be fabulous to be able to separate from what happens in Westminster, because between us and that building there is a total disconnection.
He measured himself with the great machine of American cinema in Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan. Another disconnect?
The coolest thing in Dunkirk it was to look Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy at work (first Irish, second English, ed). I’ve never seriously considered a move to Hollywood, too far from the freezing sea where I like to swim and far from the theater where I hope to work forever. And anyway in California there is too much sun.
iO Donna © REPRODUCTION RESERVED