In August, Jack Lowden and Saoirse Ronan took a holiday to Perthshire. Not for this Hollywood couple the glistening white sands of the Maldives, or a five-star retreat in Mexico. Instead, contrary to their starry reputations – 29-year-old Ronan has received four Oscar nominations while Scots actor Lowden, 33, recently emerged as a favourite to play the new James Bond – the pair spent a quiet week Munro bagging.
Hiking up a variety of mountains during their break – on one misty day they climbed the summit of Ben Vorlich with their beloved terrier Fran before enjoying a dip in Loch Earn, and just a few days later were enjoying the views atop Ben Chonzie – they have racked up 12 Munros. Not bad for two of the world’s most in-demand actors.
Rising star: Saoirse Ronan at the Golden Globe Awards in Hollywood
Now, it would seem the couple are ready to take their relationship to even dizzier heights. Last weekend, they were snapped walking their dog near their London home, with Ronan sporting what looks suspiciously like an engagement ring on her finger.
While they have yet to comment publicly, given that the pair, who have been together for five years, recently purchased a £2.5million home together and have set up their own production company, it would appear they are in it for the long haul.
And the union could create one of the most intriguing Hollywood couples since the halcyon days of Brangelina, and Tom and Nicole.
Although, in contrast to the glitzy party circuit favoured by many A-list couples, Ronan and Lowden are more likely to be spotted having a quiet pint at the unshowy Laurieston Bar in Glasgow, where they have previously hung out, than be seen at celebrity hotspots such as Bar Marmont or the Ivy in Los Angeles.
American-born Irish actress Ronan is, on paper, the bigger star. Alongside those four Academy Award nominations, for films including Atonement and Little Women, she has also earned four Golden Globe nominations,
five Bafta nods and in 2020 was placed tenth in The New York Times list of the 100 greatest actors of the 21st century.
Yet Lowden’s star is most certainly on the ascendant.
Earlier this year he earned plaudits for his role as criminal Kenneth Noye in BBC One Brink’s-Mat robbery drama The Gold, penned by Scots screenwriter Neil Forsyth, and currently stars in Apple TV spy series Slow Horses with Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott-Thomas, a part that earned him a Bafta TV Awards Supporting Actor nomination earlier this year.
Well matched: Jack and Saoirse in Mary Queen of Scots
He’s also had roles in major Hollywood movies including Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, where he played an RAF fighter pilot, and portrayed Lord Darnley in the recent glossy production of Mary Queen of Scots, which is where he first met Ronan.
Then, of course, there are those Bond rumours.
It’s all a long way from the Galashiels Amateur Operatic Society, where Lowden first cut his acting teeth and remains hugely fond of today. ‘It was like a rite of passage,’ he said once.
‘You’d be in Guys and Dolls performing next to a teacher or a fireman or whatever. Just seeing these people light up on a Tuesday night was amazing.’
Born in Chelmsford, where his parents relocated in order to access IVF treatment, Lowden and his equally talented ballet-dancing brother Calum, were brought up in the tiny Borders village of Oxton after his parents moved back home to Scotland.
A ‘very, very, very shy child’, as a young boy he was fascinated by British TV sitcoms – Porridge, Open All Hours and Only Fools and Horses were among his favourites – and disliked any behind the scenes footage that revealed the sets were fake.
‘I didn’t want to know it wasn’t real,’ he said. ‘Everything in those programmes just had a lovely air to it. Everything seemed quite innocent. Nobody seemed bored. There was no boredom at all. And I just wanted to live in them.’
Instead, after a brief and unsuccessful foray into ballet classes with his brother – ‘I was encouraged, very quickly, to do the narrating’ – he settled for amateur operatics.
‘It’s a big thing. It’s huge. In the Borders, it’s like life and death,’ he said. ‘There are like eight or nine societies. People who have been in their society for 50 years get their 50-year medal. They take it f***ing seriously. More seriously than in the profession.’
It sparked in Lowden a huge love of the stage that he retains almost 20 years later.
The Munro-bagging couple take in a view
‘I’m a music hall actor,’ he said once, ‘in this very technical profession.’ Early on though, his ambitions lay in an entirely
different direction. ‘I wanted to be a footballer,’ he said. ‘It absolutely broke my heart when I realised I wasn’t going to be one.
‘If someone waved a wand and I was able to play football really well, I’d bite their hand off and do that, over this [acting].’
Footballing dreams dashed, his acting was honed at the Scottish Youth Theatre and at the summer school at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London – not to mention a stint playing the lead in The Buddy Holly Story at his high school in Earlston.
After school, he went to the then Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow to study acting. His first on-screen role, aged 18, was in an Irn-Bru advert (‘it’s like part of your national service in Scotland’ he said once) that, somewhat appropriately given his musical background, spoofed High School Musical.
The clip is still on YouTube and on almost every film set Lowden has been on since he inevitably discovers a group of crew members crowded round a phone, giggling, and realises: ‘Yeah, they’ve found my beginnings.’
Fortunately, glossier productions awaited after he graduated from the RSAMD – now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland – and his first big break came when he was cast in the lead role in Black Watch, the National Theatre of Scotland’s smash hit production about soldiers in Iraq, which toured not just the UK but the US and Canada.
‘We didn’t play theatres. We played arenas. You felt like a rock star,’ he said of the tour, which led to him being cast in a 2014 performance in Ibsen’s Ghosts and won him Best Supporting Actor at the Olivier Awards.
Transitioning to screen work then, after spending so much time on stage was a shock. ‘I was like, what? There’s no audience. It’s like acting on a building site.
‘The pedestrian element of film sets kicks in. Because film is much more technical and takes much longer. The buzz is not there.’
Still, he got the parts, with his first major role in the 2016 BBC drama War and Peace, alongside the actor James Norton.
Hollywood director Christopher Nolan came calling not long afterwards, and Lowden found himself cast in Dunkirk and then Mary Queen of Scots in quick succession. His most recent role, playing
convicted murderer Kenneth Noye, attracted controversy for downplaying Noye’s criminal past.
‘There’s a lot of people that were affected by this that are still around,’ Lowden said. ‘It was the biggest robbery in history up until that point, and there were a lot of people out of their depths.
‘We had to be quite sensitive towards that whilst also making it entertaining and dramatic.’
He says he has turned down the odd big money role, something his father, a manager at the Bank of Scotland, doesn’t understand.
‘He says, ‘Why would you do that?’ But I’ve never regretted it.’ And he doesn’t seem overly bowled over by Hollywood either. ‘I’ve been over a few times, but here seems to be where it’s happening,’ he said. ‘The quality of stuff being made in the UK is fantastic.’
But what about the ultimate big-money role – playing James Bond? One of a number of actors reported to be in the running for the part, including fellow Scot Richard Madden, Happy Valley
villain James Norton and Hollywood action star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, he has refused to confirm or deny speculation, saying simply: ‘I’m still trying to get over the fact Daniel Craig’s not doing it any more.’
Lowden met Ronan on the set of Mary Queen of Scots – she played the title role – while his Darnley was portrayed as violent and abusive. Before they were even a couple they had to perform an unpleasant sex scene.
‘It’s this scene where she tries to get him to basically impregnate her,’ he said.
‘And we were like, what if you started hitting me? That was when I’d first met her, so I went, ‘Yeah, hit me as hard as you want’.’
When Lowden returned to his trailer he found a large bruise across his chest and says he ‘couldn’t move’. ‘It was a strange way to meet,’ he later reflected.
He is a huge supporter of Ronan’s career, describing her as ‘one of the best actors in the world’, although he admits that rehearsing lines with her can be intimidating.
‘Sometimes she gives a better performance than me off camera and you’re like, ‘Can you, erm, not?’. We are not competitive, not in the slightest, because I’d lose,’ he added.
‘There is just zero competition because there is no competition.’
The two recently set up their own production company Arcade Pictures and its first film, The Outrun, starring Ronan and produced by Lowden is, appropriately, set in Scotland. Based on the true story of an alcoholic who flees to Orkney, it was filmed on the islands last year.
Lowden clearly relished working with the woman he loves. ‘When you’re given a Ferrari like her, it’s all about how you make everything good for the Ferrari to show off,’ he says. ‘Don’t make a Ferrari do what a Renault Clio does. It’s a dreadful analogy but good actors are like gold dust.
‘When there’s someone like that, you just have to facilitate them and you will get gold. And my God, did we.’
He is also immensely proud of his brother Calum, who, having trained at Manor School of Ballet in Edinburgh before moving on to the English National Ballet school and the Royal Ballet school, joined the Royal Swedish Ballet company in 2011 and is now its principal dancer.
In September, Lowden was in the audience to watch his brother dance the lead role he’s wanted to perform his whole life in Jules Massenet’s Manon. ‘The work he’s put in over a 15-year plus career has been beautiful to watch,’ Lowden posted on Instagram, adding: ‘Love ye tae thon moon an back’.
While neither he nor Ronan actively court publicity – Ronan doesn’t even have social media – they are surprisingly sanguine about the attention they receive.
‘I’m not an idiot,’ he said once. ‘Her and I don’t find it that odd. We’re hugely appreciative of the level of scrutiny we have.
‘We’re treated well but we don’t seek it either. People have got it far worse. It’s also obviously of our own making. As long as we’ve got each other, we’re all right with any of that.’
Each other, and plenty more Munros to bag, when they fancy a break from it all.