Jeremy Swift

Swift was born on 27 June 1960 in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham. Both his parents were music teachers.^[2] In the 2000s, Swift appeared in Gosford Park playing the footman Arthur, and Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist as Mr. Bumble. For BBC3, he played Barry in the cult hit The Smoking Room and had a theatrical hit with Abigail's Party, the last production at the old Hampstead Theatre and their longest running West End transfer.

In 2009, he played the lead in the true story of art forger Shaun Greenhalgh in The Antiques' Rogue Show for BBC2 with Liz Smith and Peter Vaughn, The Deacon in a film adaptation of Anton Chekhov's short story The Duel and featured in Canoe Man, a 2010 TV drama based on the John Darwin disappearance case.^{[citation needed]}

He starred in the independent British feature film Downhill, which is a comedy about four men attempting Alfred Wainwright's Coast to Coast Walk which was released in 2014 and co-stars Ned Dennehy, Karl Theobald and Richard Lumsden. The film was directed by James Rouse and the screenplay was written by Torben Betts.

Swift is also a composer and his work includes the score for Werewolves: The Dark Survivors (Wide-eyed Entertainment) for the Discovery channel and ITV global.

On ITV, Swift played Septimus Spratt, the butler of the Dowager Countess, in Downton Abbey for three seasons and has been seen as Dennis, manservant to Countess Mavrodaki (Leslie Caron) in Episodes 3-6 of The Durrells. He also played election agent Glenvil Harris in the last two series of Foyle's War. He played Gooding in Mary Poppins Returns, which was released in 2018.

In 2020, he played the role of Leslie Higgins in Apple TV+'s show, Ted Lasso, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2021.^[3][4]

Swift is married to actress Mary Roscoe (who plays his wife, Julie Higgins, on Ted Lasso), whom he met while working on a play. They have two adopted children. He is a skilled jazz musician and, as Higgins, plays the double bass in an episode of Ted Lasso.^[5]