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Angus Macfadyen

Scottish actor Angus Macfadyen has built a career around characters who carry history, danger or contradiction with them. Born in Glasgow on September 21, 1963, he was brought up in the Philippines, Africa, Singapore and France while his father worked as a doctor for the World Health Organization. He later attended the University of Edinburgh and London’s Central School of Speech and Drama. Macfadyen’s first screen role came in the television film The Lost Language of Cranes, in which he played Philip, a young man preparing to tell his parents that he is gay. Work in Soldier Soldier, 15: The Life and Death of Philip Knight and Takin’ Over the Asylum followed before he took on Robert the Bruce in Braveheart. It became one of the roles most closely associated with his screen career and established his knack for playing men caught between authority, ambition and uncertainty. That quality has served him across an unusually varied collection of historical and literary figures. He portrayed Richard Burton in Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story, Peter Lawford in The Rat Pack and Orson Welles in Tim Robbins’s Cradle Will Rock. In Julie Taymor’s Titus, he appeared as Lucius opposite Anthony Hopkins, while later television work included Marcus Crassus in Spartacus, Robert Rogers in Turn: Washington’s Spies and Allan Pinkerton in The Pinkertons. Macfadyen has also moved comfortably into more heightened genre territory. He played Vice-Counsel Dupont in the dystopian thriller Equilibrium, the title pirate in the Blackbeard miniseries and the revenge-driven Jeff Denlon in Saw III and Saw IV. His interest in Shakespeare continued with Falstaff in the modern adaptation H4 and Macbeth: Unhinged, a feature adaptation in which he both starred and directed. Later roles have included biologist James Murray in The Lost City of Z and Jor-El in Superman & Lois. Across film, television and stage work, Macfadyen’s career has remained difficult to pin to one type—a fitting shape for an actor equally at home with Shakespeare, historical drama, horror and comic-book mythology.