Andrew Scott lets us see what it costs his characters to stay composed. We rate him particularly highly in All of Us Strangers and Pressure, where small changes of expression do much of the dramatic work.
Fi1m perspective
In Pressure (2026), Andrew Scott's James Stagg tries to keep his frustration out of a discussion about the weather before D-Day. Scott doesn't make him serenely certain: the small changes in his face suggest how much effort speaking calmly takes. We felt tense watching him stand by an unwelcome forecast, because his composure seemed liable to give way. Anthony Maras gives him a useful opposite in Brendan Fraser's Eisenhower, who needs more certainty than Stagg can offer. Scott makes the film's slightly too tidy defence of expertise feel less comfortable.
The priest in Fleabag (2019) brought wider attention after Jim Moriarty in Sherlock (2010–2017), and made room for romantic-comedy timing alongside writer-actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge. His subsequent screen leads include All of Us Strangers (2023), Ripley (2024) and Pressure. That move towards longer stretches of attention suits an actor whose small physical adjustments matter. We want time to watch his characters think before they speak.
Andrew Haigh makes particularly good use of that patience in All of Us Strangers. As Adam, a screenwriter living almost alone in a tower block, Scott begins with the stillness of someone who has grown used to expecting little. He lets the longing show gradually, especially when Adam visits the parents he lost as a boy, played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell. The early scenes with Paul Mescal's Harry are careful about the awkwardness of accepting touch after a long time alone. Scott remains persuasive even where the writing gives Harry too little of a life beyond his kindness to Adam.
A good actor still needs something to do, and Rian Johnson's Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) gives Scott too little. He is among the performers left sitting in pews, waiting to become suspects, while a few colleagues get fuller characters. Bob Ducsay's patient editing suits the opening hour, but the repeated interviews later on make the shortage of material harder to ignore. Start with All of Us Strangers for Scott, with the caveat that its romance gives one man considerably more to do than the other.
Biography
Andrew Scott is an Irish actor. He was born on 21 October 1976 in Dublin.
Scott first came to prominence as Jim Moriarty in the BBC series Sherlock (2010–2017), for which he won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Supporting Actor. He played the priest in the second series of Fleabag (2019) and starred as Tom Ripley in the 2024 series Ripley. His film roles include Adam in All of Us Strangers (2023) and Lee Ross in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025).
On stage, he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for Present Laughter at the Old Vic in 2019, and the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre in 2005 for A Girl in a Car with a Man at the Royal Court Theatre. He has also appeared in Spectre (2015), 1917 (2019) and Pride (2014).
