Twenty years of stage discipline, isolation, and silence have made Andrew Scott the only actor who could bring Ian Charleson's final Hamlet to the screen.

Andrew Scott grew up in Dublin. He dropped out of a drama program at Trinity College Dublin to join the Abbey Theatre — a trade that, in retrospect, established the priorities that have shaped everything since. His earliest screen work, including a supporting role in Band of Brothers (2001), gave little indication of what was coming. His first decade was mostly stage, mostly London, mostly invisible to anyone who wasn't looking.

Before the Screen Found Him

That stage period was not delay. Scott won a Laurence Olivier Award in 2005 for A Girl in a Car with a Man at the Bush Theatre and again in 2019 for Present Laughter, with nominations in between for Hamlet (2017) and Vanya (2023). The Hamlet nomination is the one that matters most in retrospect: Scott spent years living inside that play before Elsinore asked him to play someone else living inside it. His turn as Jim Moriarty across Sherlock (2010–2017) won a BAFTA Television Award and introduced him to an international audience through a character who controlled every scene by doing as little as possible.

The Accumulation

The roles since Sherlock share an architecture. In Spectre (2015), Scott played Max Denbigh, the government official revealed as the hidden antagonist. In 1917 (2019), he appeared as Lieutenant Leslie. In All of Us Strangers (2023), directed by Andrew Haigh, Scott played Adam, a screenwriter who returns to the house where his parents died and finds them still there. It earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama. Ripley (2024), the Netflix series, followed: Scott as Tom Ripley, moving through Italy, becoming whoever the moment requires. Another Emmy nomination. Another Golden Globe nomination. A run of characters for whom isolation is the condition, not the problem.

What Elsinore Requires

Elsinore, directed by Simon Stone, opens November 20. The film follows Scottish actor Ian Charleson in 1989, after his AIDS diagnosis, as he prepares to perform Hamlet at London's National Theatre. Scott plays the role on three levels: himself as an actor, Charleson performing Hamlet, and Hamlet. He produced the film, the first time he has held that credit. According to Collider, Scott and co-star Billie Piper filmed their final death scene on the first day of production, before they had established the friendship that scene needs to land.

Elsinore won TIFF's International People's Choice Award and arrives with notices calling it Scott's career-best performance. The cast includes Olivia Colman, Billie Piper, Joe Locke, and Johnny Flynn.