Written by Nik Mohan

Andrew Scott has spent more than three decades building the kind of career that resists easy definition. He has been a Shakespearean leading man, a Bond villain, an anarchic criminal mastermind, a lovelorn priest and, increasingly, one of contemporary cinema’s most compelling interpreters of grief, desire and queer experience.

At the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, the Irish actor looked back on that journey during an intimate edition of TIFF’s 'In Conversation With…' series.

Presented by Redbreast Irish Whiskey, the September 12 conversation at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre brought Scott’s past and present together at a fitting moment. Redbreast returned to TIFF for its second year as the Festival’s Official Whiskey, while Scott — their Global Brand Ambassador — arrived in Toronto with 'Elsinore', one of the most personal projects of his career.

The partnership extends beyond Scott acting as the face of the brand. He has also become involved with Redbreast Unhidden, its global film platform dedicated to spotlighting filmmakers and stories that can easily be overshadowed by bigger premieres.

That idea of discovery made Scott an appropriate figure for an evening spent looking back at a career defined by unexpected choices.

Scott’s screen career began on a much smaller scale with Cathal Black’s 1995 Irish drama 'Korea', adapted from a story by John McGahern.

Scott plays Eamon, a young man living in rural Ireland whose relationship with Una becomes entangled with an old conflict between their families. Seen now, 'Korea' is a fascinating starting point. Scott is strikingly young, but many of the qualities that would later define his work are already visible: restraint, emotional ambiguity and an ability to suggest far more than his character says aloud.

“It was about a father and son, and I was starring across this wonderful Irish actor called Donal Donnelly, and he incredibly kind to everybody on set,” Scott said. “I learned how to be on a set because he was very kind and fun with everybody.”

Beginning in 2010, 'Sherlock' introduced Scott to an enormous international audience as Jim Moriarty. Rather than playing Holmes’ famous adversary as a conventional mastermind, Scott made him flamboyant, funny, petulant and suddenly terrifying — often within the same scene.

The performance transformed his profile and demonstrated the unpredictability that would become central to his appeal.

“They say it in Shakespeare don’t they? You don’t play the King. You never play the power — everybody else plays the power. When you come into the room [as King], everybody else kneels in front of you. But if you in are expecting all the stuff, that’s not real power, it’s the expectation that’s power,” said Scott about Moriarty.

In 2014 came 'Pride', Matthew Warchus’ ensemble drama about the real-life alliance between gay activists and striking miners during the 1980s.

Scott played Gethin Roberts, whose return to Wales forces him to confront a part of his past he has spent years keeping at a distance. In a film filled with memorable personalities, Scott does some of his most affecting work quietly, turning Gethin’s story into one about belonging, family and identity.

Five years later, Scott joined the second season of 'Fleabag' and became known across the internet by two words that were never actually his character’s name: Hot Priest.

What could have been a charming supporting role became one of the show’s emotional centres. Scott played the Priest with warmth, humour and contradiction, while his chemistry with Phoebe Waller-Bridge gave the season its emotional engine.

“I love that fact that nobody knows their names,” Scott commented on the central characters in ‘Fleabag.’ “They don’t have any backstory. But if you can write something incredibly well and your inventive, and you cast it well and there’s chemistry, then it creates something that the audience see themselves in.”

That idea of looking beyond the obvious also extended beyond Scott’s own career at TIFF. Through its 'Unhidden Gems presented by Redbreast' programme, Redbreast used its second year as TIFF’s Official Whiskey to spotlight films outside the Festival’s biggest premieres.

The 2026 selections included 'Arne Goes to Space', a Swedish drama about two brothers whose isolated existence is disrupted by an unexpected visitor; documentary 'Gail'; Alexandre Franchi’s 'L’Autre'; animated historical drama 'The Violinist', and Tom Nicoll’s 'Salvation', a darkly comic look at online self-improvement and male influencer culture.

The range is deliberately broad, moving between documentary, animation, international drama and emerging filmmakers. Rather than creating another hierarchy of TIFF’s biggest films, Unhidden Gems is built around encouraging discovery among the hundreds of stories competing for attention.

That gives Redbreast’s involvement with TIFF a natural connection to Scott. His own career has repeatedly involved finding something unexpected inside characters who could easily have been played more conventionally.

Scott took another sharp turn with 'Ripley', Steven Zaillian’s stark black-and-white adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 'The Talented Mr. Ripley'. Playing Tom Ripley, Scott strips away much of the character’s surface charm and leans instead into something colder, quieter and more unsettling. His performance is built on calculation and restraint, with long silences and small gestures revealing a man constantly assessing the people and opportunities around him. Scott said he found the “blankness” of the character “hard to live with.” It’s one of Scott’s most controlled performances, and further proof of how effectively he can make ambiguity feel compelling rather than distant.

But few performances have demonstrated Scott’s emotional openness better than Andrew Haigh’s 'All of Us Strangers'. Scott plays Adam, a lonely screenwriter whose developing relationship with neighbour Harry, played by Paul Mescal, unfolds alongside something stranger: Adam begins visiting his childhood home, where the parents he lost as a child appear to still be living.

Haigh folds romance, memory, loneliness and grief together until they become almost impossible to separate. Scott’s performance is remarkably exposed, showing how much he can communicate through pauses, glances and hesitation.

“People often talk about the relationship between the director and the actor, the most important relationships for me and between the writer and the actor,” the actor said. “If somebody has written something and you connect to it, I feel like it’s almost gilding the lily too much — to burden it with too much performance in some ways.”

Enter 'Elsinore'. Directed by Simon Stone and written by 'Pride' screenwriter Stephen Beresford, the film casts Scott as Scottish actor Ian Charleson, best known on screen for 'Chariots of Fire'.

Charleson, who was living with AIDS, went on to deliver a celebrated final performance as Hamlet at London’s National Theatre before his death in 1990 at the age of 40. Scott also serves as a producer on the film, alongside a cast that includes Olivia Colman, Billie Piper and Johnny Flynn.

For Scott, the project brings together many of the strands running throughout his career: theatre and cinema, Shakespeare, queer history, performance and mortality.

There is also something particularly moving about one actor preserving the story of another. 'Elsinore' becomes more than a recreation of Charleson’s final performance; it explores why actors perform, what remains after the curtain falls, and how art can outlive the person who created it.

The film’s arrival at TIFF also tied naturally into Redbreast’s wider focus on cinematic discovery. Its film initiatives are built around the pleasure of finding something exceptional that might otherwise remain hidden — whether that is a filmmaker, a performance or an unexpected story.

Scott’s career makes an unusually good argument for exactly that.

The young actor appearing in 'Korea' in 1995 could hardly have anticipated Moriarty, Gethin, the Priest, Adam or Ian Charleson. Yet placed beside one another, those performances reveal a consistent fascination with characters whose inner lives are far more complicated than they initially appear.

“I wanted to be at the center of it, I didn’t want anybody to get it wrong,” Scott said about ‘Elsinore.’ “The story is peppered with the most incredible people who I’ve loved and acted with like Olivia Coleman and Billie Piper — Johnny Flynn who plays Dickie [in ‘Ripley’]. My sister, who’s also an actor… she plays a casting director [in the film]. Ian’s best friend — of course a lot of his best friends are still around, and they’re in the movie.”