Ken Stott is the man who arrives to take charge: the detective, the museum man, the dwarf in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. He plays authority as tiredness rather than swagger, and the films that use him best are the ones that let him stay.
Fi1m perspective
Ken Stott usually turns up when somebody has done something they should not have. In Shallow Grave (1994) he is Detective Inspector McCall, the policeman circling three flatmates and the money they ought to have left alone. In The Dig (2021) he is Charles Phillips, down from the British Museum to take the Sutton Hoo excavation off the man who found it. In both he arrives late and expects to be obeyed, and in both the interesting thing is how little he appears to enjoy it. The Edinburgh voice comes out low and unhurried, the shoulders are set, and he looks at the people in front of him as though he has already heard the excuse.
The career is mostly television, and mostly detectives. He came to notice as Eddie McKenna, the hospital radio DJ in Takin' Over the Asylum (1994), the same year as Boyle's film, and then spent the better part of a decade in a raincoat: The Vice (1999–2003), Messiah (2001–2005) and above all Rebus (2000–2007), the part that fixed his public image as the tired Scottish policeman. Peter Jackson then cast him as Balin across The Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), which put the face in front of a far larger audience, though under a good deal of beard. Since then it has been supporting parts, The Dig among them, and Crime (2021–) on television. He has said of his early years with the RSC that "I had 17 small parts – they wouldn’t trust me with anything bigger", and there is a flavour of that in the men he now plays, who have waited a long time to be put in charge and do not intend to waste it.
What he does well is refuse to perform power. He does not raise the voice or widen the eyes; the authority is in the stillness and the evident fatigue, and it makes the people around him look hasty. In The Dig we sat up when he walked onto the site, because for the first time the film had an argument, about who owns a thing once it comes out of the ground, and we were irritated when it left him for a romance that belongs to a thinner picture. That is not his failing. Simon Stone's film is at its best in the trench and weakest whenever it climbs out, and Stott is one of the reasons the trench is worth staying in.
Shallow Grave is Boyle's film, brisk and nasty, and Stott's inspector is part of its machinery rather than its centre; the performances keep it entertaining and his is one of them, no more and no less. The limit of the career is plain enough: the parts are all the same shape. By reputation, Eddie McKenna was a warmer and wilder actor than the detectives ever allowed, and we would like a film director to remember that before the raincoat becomes permanent. Until then, when he walks into a scene, watch him rather than whoever he has come to tell off; the camera will generally cut away too soon.
Biography
Ken Stott is a Scottish stage, television and film actor. He was born in Edinburgh and trained at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London. He began his career in theatre, working with the Royal Shakespeare Company and later the National Theatre.
Stott is known for his role as Detective Inspector McCall in the film Shallow Grave (1994). He received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1995 for his performance in Broken Glass. His other notable screen roles include Balin in The Hobbit film trilogy (2012–2014) and DI John Rebus in the television series Rebus (2000–2007).
