Interview with Andrew Scott

Actor

Thursday / October 1, 2026

About Andrew Scott

Irish actor known for Moriarty in Sherlock, the priest in Fleabag, All of Us Strangers and the title role in Ripley.

These answers are taken from Andrew Scott Career Retrospective | Conversations at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation on SAG-AFTRA Foundation's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.

What was your very first experience with acting?

I remember writing down when I was about nine that that's what my ambition was. I remember having a piece of paper that I very strangely kept, saying that's what I want to do. I used to watch old MGM movies, old school movies. I remember on a Saturday afternoon they were on in Ireland, and I was just completely transfixed by them. And I was also very shy. I thought, I want to do that.

I had a speech impediment. I had a quite strong lisp when I was a kid, so I went to elocution lessons, which were incredibly boring. But there was speech and drama, and so the speech part was difficult, but the drama part I loved, even though I was really, really very nervous about it. So that's how I started.

When did you start acting?

I was in the production of The Wizard of Oz when I was maybe 10 or 11. I did a porridge commercial when I was eight years old, and I was on a set for the first time for a couple of days, and I did a couple of little ads when I was a kid, but I wouldn't describe myself as a child actor. And then I did these drama classes every weekend. I never really formally trained, but I think it's where I really learned about Shakespeare and Chekhov, because we used to do little excerpts from it.

When I was about 17, these casting directors came to cast an independent film in Ireland. So I'd made a movie when I was 17, a very small movie, but a very, very important one for me. And then I got opportunities to audition, because they said, "Oh, he's been in a film." So I auditioned for the Abbey, and very fortuitously got three parts in a row when I was 19.

What attracted you to begin a career as an actor?

I felt like it just came very naturally to me. I think because I was so nervous before doing it, and then I felt so alive after it. And I suppose it's because I felt like people responded to me when I was acting. I felt seen, and I felt that people were like, "Oh, you're good at that." And you go toward those things that you're sort of good at.

But all that stuff about writing and being able to say extraordinary things that you may not have the eloquence to be able to come up with yourself, it's a wonderful thing that human beings came up with: that you actually feed another human being something to make them more themselves. Which is what I kind of think acting is. Rather than pretending to be someone else, I think it's becoming more yourself, or different facets of yourself.

What was a great moment for you as an actor?

Phoebe and I had done a play together about seven years before we did Fleabag. She'd done Fleabag series one, and she had this idea of creating this priest character, and she hadn't written it at the time. We went for this walk, and we hadn't seen each other in a few years, and we had one of those experiences that just stays with you for your whole life, because we had this extraordinary reconnection. We talked about religion and priests and love and where we were in our own lives, and what you want the audience to feel rather than plotting.

I was like, "Oh, well, there's a Quaker hall in the middle of Soho that I go to when London becomes a bit much, and it's completely silent. Why don't we go there now?" We went into this creaky old building and it was completely empty, and she wrote it into the series in a completely subversive way. We had this conversation for two hours about everything and nobody disturbed us. And the magic of Phoebe is that she incorporated that into the story in so many ways.

How did your acting career unfold?

When I was 19 I got three parts in a row at the Abbey. I couldn't believe that I was earning money for it. I remember going to the ATM and just going, "My god, I can't believe I'm being paid for this." I think all the older company of actors were like, who is this tiny little boy who's all of a sudden here? I did Pirandello and some Oscar Wilde, and I learned how to be an actor there.

I was told by a director that I would be very difficult to cast, which is such a terrible thing to hear. When you're starting out, you think, oh god, maybe that's true. You're so susceptible to other people's opinions. But the big thing that I had in my head was about playing a villain. I knew that even though I looked youthful and innocent, there was that side to me. So when I had an audition for Sherlock, to play the villain, I relished the fact that they were like, "Who's this?" And I knew that I was going to frighten them, and I did.

What advice do you have for new actors?

It's a Meryl Streep thing. I think she said it, or at least I heard her quoting it, which is to pack your own suitcase. You might have a feeling that you can do something but nobody else can see it, and so you don't allow the other person to pack your suitcase. You just have your own spark of divine fire, because people have a lot of opinions, particularly when you're starting out: I see you as this, you're never going to... And you're surviving as an actor completely against the odds. So why you should listen to odds from people is slightly preposterous.

I think one of the great skills to learn is that if it's for you, it won't go by you. I really think that's important, because you could eat yourself up in this industry, and it's really, really hard and it's very competitive. If you get so tense about something, it's just not going to help anything. This industry is wonderful, but it can erode away at your life.

Think about a demanding director, professor or cast mate. What made him or her difficult? How did you successfully interact with this person?

One of the most beautiful things that I ever learned was that it's very important to have differences of opinion on a movie set or in a rehearsal room, but that you should argue as allies, not as enemies. Sometimes actors are required to save the day a lot of the time. You think, how am I going to make this work? You're required to make miracles sometimes out of stuff that isn't particularly good. And so you have to argue for that, and you have to be tough, but at the same time you don't want to be like a bulldog.

You've got to go, okay, well, this person wants this to work out as well. We just have a difference of opinion. I believe in just try it. Let's not talk about it. Let's see if it works.

I really trust actors. I do believe that for the most part, if actors get to try something, they'll concede that it doesn't work, or they'll go, oh my god, that really did work.

Who is your favorite actor, and why?

Glenn Close is so wonderful. She still has an enthusiasm and a hunger for, and a delight actually in, being an actor. She sometimes turns up to set when she's not on. There's this idea that when you're garlanded and respected and adored as she is by so many people, you'll rest on your laurels. She's like, "No, I'm going to do this."

She's obviously incredibly gifted, but she goes, "Oh, well, maybe I don't know how to do this. I'm going to ask." I always love this premise that any artistic or scientific breakthrough starts with the idea of I don't know. You're not going to break through if you already know.

And I think that's why all the ones that I love, Judi Dench and Meryl Streep and Tony Hopkins, they're all players. They play.

Describe your acting style.

I wouldn't say that I'm in any way a method actor. I get embarrassed when I say this because I say it a lot, but I feel like you're just required to play a part. So you have to have a playful atmosphere. If the atmosphere is tense and weird, you don't feel like experimenting. When you look at kids, they are excellent at playing because they feel alive, and they're not embarrassed to be playing. I kind of like the idea of recording the very first thing that you do.

The thing that I always try to find is the love. For me it's like organizing the mess. I feel like a character is like you've got loads of mess and then you just have to sort of organize it, and then change it around.

Tell me about a time where you had difficulty with a character. What was the role and why was it challenging?

With Ripley, I found that part very difficult, I'm not going to lie, because he's very different to the way that I am. There was an opaqueness to that character that I found it hard to get access to. I think understanding that there's a part of it that I won't ever get to, and understanding that there are people that we all know who actually don't know themselves very well. That's what's kind of frightening about them: they're not near their emotions. It's the absence of something.

We shot it during COVID, and I was away from home, and people couldn't come and visit, and I couldn't go home. I was also playing a very solitary character. It's quite rare that an eight-part series would just be about one person who's alone on his own. So the sheer amount of time was difficult, and the language barrier, coupled with the part and with what was going on in the world. It made me kind of sick, if I'm honest. I understood that I have to be careful with myself a little bit.

What was the biggest audience you have performed in front of?

[Sherlock] became almost immediately a huge phenomenon in the UK and did incredibly well internationally. It was watched by 15 million people. I had to keep this secret that I was playing Moriarty. Who is going to be the villain? It was going to be a big reveal at the end. So along with 15 million other people I was like, oh my god, I'm coming, I haven't seen this. And then I saw it and I was absolutely devastated by my performance. I thought, "Oh god, no. That's so much."

I remember at the time thinking that I was going to get fired. It was my first experience with online opinion, and it's brutal. But I'd worked for 15 years probably in the theater. I was a bit like, you know what, I'm not going to tone it down, because that was my instinct. I'm going to ride this out.

Tell me something I may not know from reading your resume.

The first commercial that I ever got was for Flahavan's porridge. I do not like any food that you don't have to put any effort into eating. When I was this little diva at 8 years old, they were like, "You have to eat the porridge." And I was like, "Oh, I don't really like it." And they were like, "This child isn't being very convincing that he loves this porridge." And so they ended up putting boiling water. I preferred to eat boiling water than this porridge.

I got paid 90 pounds. And what you could get for 90 pounds back in the day was a bunk bed that had a wardrobe and a little desk underneath, made of incredibly cheap MDF wood, with a ladder. And I was so proud of that, before it collapsed three weeks later.

In which area would you like to improve as an actor?

I'd love to be in a musical. I'm not a confident singer, so that's something I'd love to sort of explore a little bit. You want to be good, but there are parts that you can sort of act-sing. I'd be happy with that. I don't need to be a great singing genius. But I love the whole thing of musicals. I suppose it goes back to those musicals that I watched when I was a kid. It's completely joyful to me.

What are some of your professional goals for the future?

Maybe a horror film I'd like to do, and maybe some more Shakespeare. My biggest idea of what being a successful actor is, is to be able to do a radio play, to be in a horror film, to do some action, to be able to do Shakespeare, to learn what mime is like. So if there's something I think, oh, I haven't really ever had the opportunity to do that.

Writing is something that I am obsessed with when it comes to scripts. But I don't have that instinct where I think I'm going to sit down and write a script. I've got too much respect for the really brilliant writers. But directing, yeah. And producing is definitely something that I really love.

Andrew Scott's Full Biography

Andrew Scott is an Irish actor who started his career at a very young age. He made his first appearance on television in an advertisement for a brand of porridge at the age of six.

He was born into an Irish family, where his father, Jim, worked in a recruitment agency, and his mother, Nora, taught art. He has an older sister, Sarah, and a younger sister, Hannah.

He received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in an Affiliated Theater for the play "A Girl in a Car with a Man" at Jerwood Theater Upstairs and the Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor for the film Dead Bodies.

He is known for his portrayal of Paul McCartney in the 2010 BBC drama Lennon Naked and for his portrayal of villain Jim Moriarty in the modern adaptation Sherlock, also produced in 2010 by the BBC, and for which he received the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2012.

In November 2013, he revealed his homosexuality during an interview for the British daily "The Independent", while indicating that he did not play it in the interpretation of his roles: "Fortunately, nowadays, people don't perceive homosexuality as a defect. But it's also not a quality, like kindness. Or a talent, like knowing how to play the banjo. It's simply a fact. Of course, that's part of what I'm sending back, but I don't want to play with it. I'm not advertising it; I think it's important when you're an actor. But there's a difference between privacy and secrecy, and I'm not a secretive person. All I really want to do is continue doing my job, which is pretending to be a bunch of different people. It's as simple as that."

In 2014, he took on the role of a priest in Ken Loach's film, Jimmy's Hall.

In 2015, he appeared in the new James Bond film as Max Denbigh, aka "C", a member of the British government whose goal is to shut down the Double-0 spy branch.

In 2017, he returned to the role of Hamlet in the theater, under the direction of Robert Icke, for nearly 150 performances. The piece lasts almost four hours. His performance was unanimously praised by critics.

In 2019, he played "the priest" in the second season of the multi-award-winning British series Fleabag. This role notably earned him a nomination for the Golden Globes in 2020, as best supporting role in a TV series. Fans of the series nicknamed him "the hot priest", the Catholic priest with whom Fleabag fell in love. He reprised the role in 2020, in a "special" episode of the Irish series Normal People.

The same year, he reunited with Sam Mendes, with whom he had already collaborated several times in the past, in the film 1917.

Then he participated in an episode of the successful British series Black Mirror for episode 2 of season 5, entitled Smithereens.

In 2020, Andrew Scott landed the lead role in the series Tom Ripley, adapted from the novels by Patricia Highsmith. The same year, the actor read the poem "Everything is Going to be All Right" by Irish poet Derek Mahon, in a video posted on Instagram by actress Emilia Clarke. This reading is dedicated to Irish men with cancer.

Andrew Scott was part of the jury for the 2021 GQ Grooming Awards, a ceremony created by GQ magazine and which celebrates men's cosmetic products.

In November 2020, he filmed the television adaptation for HBO of the play Oslo by J.T. Rogers alongside Ruth Wilson, with Steven Spielberg as executive producer.

In March 2021, Andrew Scott filmed Lena Dunham's new film, Catherine, Called Birdy, the adaptation of the book of the same name, alongside Billie Piper.