HE wanted to be a footballer but ended up with ballet and amateur operatics before finding his niche as an actor.
Now Jack Lowden is tipped for one of the top jobs in Hollywood — with bookies slashing his odds to be the next James Bond.
Modest Jack, 32, who grew up in the Scottish Borders village of Oxton and is dating Irish actress Saoirse Ronan, refused to confirm speculation.
But he did not deny it either.
He told Esquire magazine: “Like everyone else, I’m still trying to get over the fact that Daniel Craig’s not doing it any more.”
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Jack, who can currently be seen in BBC gangster drama The Gold and alongside Gary Oldman in Apple TV hit Slow Horses, is closing the gap on bookies’ favourite James Norton, with his odds falling from 28/1 to 7/1 in recent weeks.
He added: “It’s quite bizarre because it feels like Daniel Craig is still Bond so even as a fan, even to sort of be contemplating anyone else playing him, I don’t envy them. How are they gonna replace him because I still think he is [Bond].
“He was my 007. That’s who I grew up with.”
Landing the role would be quite the coup for the Scot, who started his career in Irn-Bru adverts and never wanted to be an actor in the first place.
He has previously spoken of his childhood passion for football and how devastated he was to find out that he did not have the skills to make it as a pro.
He said: “I wanted to be a footballer. 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].”
‘I put on a lot of beef’
Jack, a self-described “IVF baby”, was born in Chelmsford, Essex, but his family moved to Oxton when dad Gordon got a job with the Bank of Scotland.
It was there that he and younger brother Calum got bitten with the performing bug — perhaps inherited from mum Jacquie, who Jack recalls “dressing up as a rhino” for her job at Edinburgh zoo.
The boys started off in dance school.
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Calum went on to the Royal Ballet School and is now principal dancer in the Swedish Royal Ballet.
But Jack did not find his path until he enrolled in the Scottish Youth Theatre.
He appeared on stage for the first time aged 12 in a Peter Pan pantomime and knew then that he wanted to be a professional actor.
But he admits he was rejected from “drama school after drama school after drama school” before eventually being accepted by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
At 18, he landed his first professional job, starring in an Irn Bru advert, which he jokes is “like part of your national service in Scotland”.
The advert, which shows him singing and dancing in the style of film, High School Musical, still causes amusement among crews on film sets.
Jacks says that when he sees a crowd of them watching something on a phone and laughing he knows, “Yeh, they’ve found my beginnings”.
He went on to win an Olivier Award for his role in the play Ghosts in 2014, but his big break came in 2016 in BBC drama War And Peace, coincidentally alongside his rival for Bond, James Norton.
Roles in movies, including Christopher Nolan’s 2017 World War Two epic Dunkirk, followed before he landed a part in 2018’s Mary Queen Of Scots.
It was there he met partner Saoirse, 28, who was playing the title character — and his love interest.
The couple now live together in London.
Jack has gushed that she is “one of the best actors in the world”, but running lines with her can be intimidating.
He said: “Sometimes she gives a better performance than me off camera and you’re like, ‘Can you, erm, not?’.”
The couple are currently working together on a film adaptation of 2015 memoir The Outrun, about a journalist who returns to Orkney after living a hedonist and alcohol-fuelled life in London.
Jack is directing and Saoirse stars.
And she has clearly blown him away.
He says: “My first love is actors. And when you’re given a Ferrari like her, it’s all about how you make everything good for the Ferrari to show off. Don’t make a Ferrari do what a Renault Clio does. It’s a dreadful analogy but they’re like gold dust good actors.
“When there’s someone like that, you just have to facilitate them and you will get gold. And my God, did we.”
Meanwhile, his role as notorious crook Kenneth Noye in BBC1 drama The Gold — about the infamous 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery — has proved just as impressive to viewers and has prompted the calls for him to be the new Bond.
But The drama has been criticised for turning murderous Noye into a sort of Robin Hood figure.
Jack said: “There’s a lot of people that were affected by this that are still around.
“It was the biggest robbery in world history up until that point. We had to be quite sensitive towards that whilst also making it entertaining.”
He went all in for the part, piling on the pounds and growing a massive 1980s barnet.
He explained: “I grew that hair! And I got big as well, I put on a lot of beef.
“That was three months of pain, but worth it in the end.”
So Bond or no Bond, is he ready to go to Hollywood?
He says: “I’ve been over a few times, but here seems to be where it’s happening. The quality of stuff being made in the UK is fantastic.”
And that’s not the only problem with LA. Like a true Scot, he adds: “I’m s**te in the sun.”