James McArdle

McArdle was born in Glasgow, growing up in the city's Darnley neighbourhood^[2] and attending St Ninian's High School, Giffnock.^[3] As a child he attended PACE Theatre Company in nearby Paisley.^[4][5] Having worked as a child actor in films, at 17 he made the decision to travel by bus to London to train as a professional without informing his parents;^[2] he was accepted to RADA after initially fluffing his audition lines but managing to return and impress the selectors.^[6][3] He left the course towards its end in 2010, and in the same year he appeared in Macbeth at The Globe and starred in the summer smash hit Spur of the Moment by Anya Reiss at the Royal Court Theatre in London. He was also well received in his role in A Month in the Country by Ivan Turgenev at the Chichester Festival Theatre.^{[citation needed]}

In 2011 McArdle played the role of Agathon in Emperor and Galilean by Henrik Ibsen at the National Theatre. He was also Robin Hood in the 2011 RSC production of The Legend, adapted by Ella Hickson.

In 2012 he starred as Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire, Mike Bartlett's stage adaptation of the film of the same title, which opened at London's Hampstead Theatre on 9 May and transferred to the West End on 23 June, running through to 5 January 2013.

He portrayed King James I of Scotland in Rona Munro's King James I, which was performed at the National Theatre and the Edinburgh International Festival in 2014.

In 2016 McArdle won the Ian Charleson Award for his 2015 performance as Platonov in Platonov at the Chichester Festival Theatre^[7]

In 2017 McArdle's performance as Louis Ironson in Angels in America at the National Theatre Lyttleton in London earned him a nomination for the Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.^[8][9] In March 2018 he stayed with the production when it transferred to Broadway for an 18-week engagement at the Neil Simon Theatre and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play.^[10][11]

In 2024 McArdle played the lead role in the comedy Four Mothers, an Irish-set adaptation of the Gianni Di Gregorio 2008 Italian film Mid-August Lunch, playing a gay young adult fiction writer taking care of his widowed mother. The film won the BFI London Film Festival Audience Award in 2024. ^[12]

In 2026, he played King James VI in the BBC docu-drama adaptation of Gareth Russell's book Queen James.