Last month Andrew Scott took part in the special 50th Anniversary National Theatre Live, in which he played a scene with Dominic Cooper as a gay couple in Angels In America. It’s not the first time he’s played gay, but generally he’s kept his own sexuality private.
However he’s now opened up, slipping into an interview with The Independent the fact that he’s gay, as well as how it affects him and his art. The interview was about Legacy, a BBC2 drama about spying between the UK and USSR during the Cold War years.
When asked about how the Irish actor perfected his Russian accent, “There isn’t a huge amount of footage of Russians speaking English as a second language, so I started looking at Vladimir Putin videos on YouTube. But then Putin introduced anti-gay legislation this summer – so, being a gay person, I switched to Rudolf Nureyev videos instead. It was another Nureyev defection of sorts!”
He adds about his sexuality, “Mercifully, these days people don’t see being gay as a character flaw. But nor is it a virtue, like kindness. Or a talent, like playing the banjo. It’s just a fact. Of course, it’s part of my make-up, but I don’t want to trade on it. I am a private person; I think that’s important if you’re an actor. But there’s a difference between privacy and secrecy, and I’m not a secretive person. Really I just want to get on with my job, which is to pretend to be lots of different people. Simple as that.”
Scott is best known for playing Moriarty in the BBC’s Sherlock. He’ll be seen next year in Pride alongside Bill Nighy, Paddy Considine & Dominic West, which is about a group of LGBT activists trying to give money to striking British miners in 1984.
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