Andrew Scott has had a long career that seems to get more impressive every year.
The out gay actor started his career stealing the spotlight as a character actor and has gone on to become a talented leading man.
This year alone he has starred opposite Lisa Kudrow in The Comeback, played Captain James Stagg in the World War II film Pressure, spit in Leo Reich’s mouth in It Gets Worse, and is set to blow everyone away in Elsinore, where he’s playing Scottish actor Ian Charleson as he takes on the role of Hamlet while seriously ill with AIDS.
From gay characters living authentically to roles with queer subtext to projects that will make you think and feel in equal measure, Scott has proven that he is a talent to be reckoned with. Scott’s staggering career has had many highlights, but which role is his best?
11. Catherine Called Birdy
Prime Video
Written and directed by Lena Dunham, Catherine Called Birdy stars Scott as Lord Rollo, a cash-strapped nobleman who is trying to marry off his daughter, played by Bella Ramsey, to wealthy, older, and usually gross suitors.
He’s in a supporting role here, but he’s also hilarious and half the reason to watch the film in the first place.
10. Band of Brothers
HBO
Scott has admitted that he “didn’t love” playing a soldier in Steven Spielberg’s miniseries Band of Brothers, where he starred as paratrooper John "Cowboy" Hall in the World War II epic, but his role managed to be moving despite his own misgivings.
Scott made the most of his short screen time — he was only in a single episode — and did an impressive job playing a character who lost his life while supplying the men of the East Company with enough TNT to stop an attack.
9. The Comeback
HBO
Scott joined the cast of The Comeback for the third season, where he played a slick and charming network executive who casts Lisa Kudrow’s character Valarie Cherish in a new sitcom.
The two actors were dynamic on screen together and Scott pulled off the detached corporate menace of a ruthless CEO to a T.
8. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Netflix
Arguably, Wake Up Dead Man is Josh O’Connor and Daniel Craig’s movie, but despite being part of a stacked ensemble cast that also includes Josh Brolin and Glenn Close, Scott manages to hold his own and puts forward a memorable performance as a popular sci-fi novelist who hit a creative slump and has fallen down a manosphere and conspiracy-theory rabbit hole.
7. Black Mirror
Netflix
Back in 2019, Scott starred in the season 5 episode of Black Mirror called Smithereens, and got a Primetime Emmy nomination for his role in the dystopian sci-fi show. Scott plays a grief-stricken rideshare driver with a mysterious distaste for social media, who ends up kidnapping an intern for the social media company Smithereen on his way to Heathrow Airport.
The episode works largely because of Scott, who quakes with anger and somehow makes you both terrified of and empathetic toward him.
6. Pride
BBC Film
In this historical comedy-drama about gay and lesbian activists who lend support to striking miners in the mid-1980s, Scott plays the owner of a gay bookshop in London who is in a May-September relationship with Jonathan, played by Dominic West.
Scott does a fantastic job of making his internal emotional wound from being in exile away from his Welsh home palpable despite never speaking it out loud.
5. It Gets Worse
Channel 4/Crave
Ok, so technically It Gets Worse hasn’t been released in the U.S. yet, but it deserves a place on this list for the scene where Scott’s therapist character tells main character Ethan "You're just a hole for daddy,” before spitting in his mouth.
4. Ripley
Netflix
Matt Damon made such an impression as Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley that it seemed impossible for anyone to put their own stamp on Patricia Highsmith’s small-time con artist who slithers his way into the lives of the yachting class.
And yet, somehow Scott manages to do just that. His meaner and more level-headed version of the popular villain in Netflix’s Ripley won over fans and critics alike because of Scott’s sheer talent for embodying the role and his ability to humanize a legendary con man and murderer.
3. Sherlock
BBC
As criminal mastermind Jim Moriarty, Scott was intense, theatrical, and obsessed with Sherlock Holmes.
While the character wasn’t textually queer, the fans considered the subtext to be undeniable and loved the chemistry between Scott’s Moriarty and Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock so much that “Sheriarty” — the ship name for Sherlock and Moriarty —became a popular fanfiction combination.
2. Fleabag
BBC
While Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag was airing, it seemed like the whole world was horny for Scott as a sexy Catholic priest.
In the show, he develops an intense, flirty relationship with Fleabag, and despite the fact that he’s not allowed to have sexual or romantic relationships, the dynamic is brimming with sexual tension. The character was so iconic that decades from now, fans will probably still be calling the talented actor Hot Priest.
1. All of Us Strangers
Searchlight Pictures
Scott plays lonely screenwriter Adam in the devastatingly beautiful romantic drama All of Us Strangers, opposite Paul Mescal.
This is one of the few times when Scott plays a gay character, and he turns in a tour-de-force performance that makes you ache for his character. The film is a tender and heartbreaking exploration of childhood trauma, loss, and queer identity, and a celebration of the healing power of love.
