That is the big question concerning the Irish actor’s towering performance in “Elsinore,” which debuted in Telluride before playing the Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by Simon Stone, the film features Scott as Ian Charleson, a Scottish actor whose career has slowed down since featuring in “Chariots of Fire.” The year is 1989, and, when Daniel Day-Lewis walks offstage during a production of “Hamlet” at London’s National Theater, Charleson sees it as an opportunity to show the world what he’s made of as an actor — even as his body is being ravaged by AIDS, and against the advice of his doctor (Olivia Colman), who warns him that the stress could further worsen his health. As Variety’s Clayton Davis wrote, “The casting is too perfect to be accidental.
Scott is himself a celebrated London Hamlet, here playing a man whose Hamlet was his last act of defiance. And a milestone waits inside the role. No openly gay man has ever won the Oscar for best actor, and Scott could very well become the first.” Scott was widely seen as “snubbed” for his embodiment of Richard Rodgers in “Blue Moon” and the haunted Adam in “All of Us Strangers.” On Saturday, Sept. 12, Scott took the stage at the Royal Alexandra Theatre to roaring applause as part of TIFF’s “In Conversation” series to discuss his much-heralded turn in “Elsinore” and his storied career.
The talk was moderated by Keith Bennie, TIFF’s vice president of public programming. The talk began with Bennie asking Scott, 49, who was sporting a striking purple jumper, about the internet’s obsession with him. I never see it,” he joked, before adding, “It’s actually wild: You never know what feral things people [will say].” “Elsinore” is the first film Scott has ever produced, so he said it “took a huge amount of encouragement and support and vision from so many people” to bring it to fruition.
It was also a very personal project for Scott, who is openly gay and has been acting in theater since the ‘90s, including his aforementioned turn as Hamlet in 2017. So many things that I really relate to.” Scott made his acting debut as a teenager in “Korea,” an Irish film that premiered at TIFF in 1995. And it was a formative experience for him, since he was given a crash course into how to conduct himself on a film set by watching his co-star, screen veteran Donal Donnelly, who led with authority but treated people with dignity and respect.
No, it was extraordinary. I was 17 and it was the first film I’d ever made,” offered Scott. At one point during the talk, Bennie shared a scene of Scott’s priest acting alongside Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the second season of “Fleabag,” which became an internet sensation and earned his character the nickname “The Hot Priest.” “If you had got a script that said, ‘The Hot Priest,’ you’d be like, ‘This is dodgy,’” joked Scott.
That’s what everybody said,” he confessed. Whoa!’ And it is like this idea that the audience is stupid. We go to see ‘Batman’ and it’s like, ‘Oh my god!
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