Running seems to be the perfect motif for Jack Lowden’s career.
The 34-year-old actor has been nominated for an Emmy for his role as River Cartwright in the Apple TV spy drama Slow Horses. Now on season four, he’s been pounding the pavements since the first episode.
But it goes back even further. In 2012, Jack Lowden played Eric Liddell in the stage version of Chariots of Fire. He spent hours perfecting Liddell’s peculiar style of running for his West End performances.
“Running seems to be literally a running theme,” he agrees.
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“I don’t have a particularly attractive run either and I’m not particularly fast but I am always playing a character that’s running away from something. And my knees are getting a battering, that’s for sure.”
His latest role will give his knees a bit of a break. In David Ireland’s new play, the Fifth Step, he plays Luka, a young man new to Alcoholics Anonymous. His Slow Horses co-star Sean Gilder plays an older man who helps him get to grips with the programme.
He says he was drawn to the project because of David Ireland, who he believes he is “one of the best playwrights working in the UK”.
“He sent me a bunch of notes and thoughts about it and it sounded mad and typically David Ireland so it was a real honour to be asked to be in it – it was a no-brainer.”
“And when I realised it was with the National Theatre of Scotland – which is where I started – and I have always wanted to do stuff here on stage, it just became a golden