When Jack Lowden first read the script for the film England Is Mine, about the formative years of Smiths frontman Steven Morrissey, he was blown away. The bracing northern humour, the brave storytelling, the scenes that were, to his mind at least, perfect studies of teenage isolation. “I thought, ‘fuck me, I have to try for the part’,” he says, eyes widening at the memory.
There was only one problem: Lowden barely knew who Morrissey was.
“He’s not someone I grew up with,” the 27-year-old Scot explains breezily, when we meet in a central London hotel. “I think the Smiths had split up before I was born.”
Lowden first heard he had got the part while in Lithuania shooting the BBC miniseries War and Peace – his big onscreen break after several successful years on the stage. You might expect him to have frantically set about learning all he could of Mozza, exam-cramming everything from This Charming Man to Earth is the Loneliest Planet. But no. In fact, director Mark Gill discouraged Lowden from finding out too much about the Manchester icon, banning him from reading his autobiography or watching any old TV appearances. The idea was to play Morrissey before he became Morrissey: an entirely different character, if England Is Mine is to be believed.
“It was probably helpful that I wasn’t a massive fan,” says Lowden. “One trap you can fall into when playing someone iconic is to end up doing everything in an iconic way, no matter how pedestrian or mundane that thing is.”
And so, instead of exaggeratedly sighing a perfect bon mot every time he ties his shoelace, Lowden plays a Morrissey more recognisable from his song lyrics – someone whose dreams are hampered by crippling uncertainty, constant hesitation and even depression. For this reason, Gill did allow Lowden to listen to certain Smiths songs, if he thought they helped explain the teen Moz’s mindset: the “16, clumsy and shy” character of Half a Person is one Lowden picks out, although it’s the opening line of Ask that sums up England Is Mine most perfectly: “Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you/From doing all the things in life you’d like to.” In the film, it takes years of persuasion from his wittier, brassier female friends – especially the artist Linder Sterling (played by Jessica Brown Findlay), who possesses all the drive and determination Morrissey seems to lack – before he makes it on to a stage at all.
Was this what Morrissey was actually like? Despite being one of the most insightful essayists of the teenage condition, Morrissey’s own teenage years have never been documented in such a way before. Moz’s childhood friend James Maker has already blasted the film, branding it “historical fiction” that suggests “if Morrissey could be a singer, then anybody could”, although as Lowden points out, he should probably watch more than the trailer before reaching his verdict. Besides, Lowden says there are plenty of people who did know the young Morrissey and remember him as “very insular, which was quite strange at the time in working-class Manchester.” That includes people who worked on the film: Gill grew up a few streets away from Morrissey, while the film’s set builder Jimmy was at the debut gig by the Nosebleeds, Morrissey’s first band. Then there were the hardcore fans who helped out on set and as extras, purely out of love for Morrissey – it was these diehards Lowden could rely upon whenever he was veering off course with his interpretation: “They’d say, no no no no no!” he grins.
Often, though, the focus is not even on Lowden. As he points out, the film is more about the people around Morrissey, and the things that shaped him, than Morrissey himself. “He’s an observer, and I think that’s the same for any brilliant author or lyricist – their observation has to be fantastic. So you spend a lot of the time watching him watch.”
Lowden is great in the film, and helps paint a movingly accurate portrait of teenage frustration, when all you want to do is change the world but your mum is still making you toast each morning. Still, as you talk to him, you do wonder if he’s setting himself up for some angry responses from obsessive fans. At one point he even seems to suggest that the man himself isn’t really an essential element of the movie: “I really think it’s a standalone film, even if you were to take Morrissey out of it.”
Is he aware that this kind of thing might not go down too well with the Moz faithful? “People have told me,” he says. “But I don’t really care about that too much. If I like it, then that’s enough for me. This is the unauthorised biopic, so we don’t owe anyone a fucking thing.”
Besides, he says, the fans who have seen the film so far have enjoyed it, and Johnny Marr was apparently very positive about the trailer when Gill met him. Talking of Marr, it’s a tantalising element of the film that when he finally meets up with Morrissey to make music, the credits roll. Not just because it signals the start of a completely new story you’re desperate to see on screen, but because by that point Lowden has transformed into a more recognisable version of Morrissey – thick-framed glasses, quiff, and a new-found confidence. There’s no doubt he can play this version of Morrissey, but he’s only allowed to right at the death.
“And I’d been chomping at the bit to do him,” laughs Lowden, who says the rapid speed of the transformation – rather than a gradual evolution – was deliberate. “We spoke a lot during the film about it being a mask, and being this very profound and almost arrogant persona he chose to put on, even if it often fell flat on its arse in the early days.
“There’s a beautiful scene with his mum at one point, where he’s like, ‘I don’t know how to be’ and I think a lot of people really got that. Because they’ve done that in their life, too. They see the cool kids over there and they’re trying. They’ve bought the T-shirt and the hat, why are they not fitting in?”
I wonder if this is what really drew Lowden to the script. The fact that, without knowing about Morrissey, he could all too easily relate to the outsider? After all, Lowden grew up as a wannabe ballet dancer (as did his younger brother Calum, who became a first soloist with the Royal Swedish Ballet) in Oxton on the Scottish borders, which in Lowden’s own words is heavily devoted to “rugby and farming”. It sounds like the typical story of an arty outsider growing up in a macho town.
He laughs at this. “Macho? There’s a lot of rugby, but there’s also a massive amateur operatics scene too, which is just as much in the blood.”
So he wasn’t a shy outsider? He shakes his head. “I was actually deputy headboy at my school. And everyone around me was very supportive of what I wanted to do. There’s no romantic story about how me and my brother got to where we are.”
Lowden does, however, describe himself as an old romantic. In the place of Morrissey, his own teenage obsessions were Frank Sinatra – he says as a kid he would often pour an inch of diet coke on the rocks and pretend it was whisky – and, er, Del Boy. “I had an unhealthy obsession with Only Fools and Horses,” he says. “I still have to watch an episode with my brother every two or three weeks.”
Nowadays he’s playing catch-up with the Smiths’ music, which has had a lasting impact on him. He names What Difference Does It Make? and How Soon Is Now? as songs that connected most deeply with him, while Panic struck an immediate chord, thanks to his Scottish background. “I was like, ‘fucking hell, Morrissey sings about Dundee!’” he laughs. “And Carlisle! Why’s he singing about them? I just love that he puts that in his songs, only he can do that.”
Still, as a young actor on the ascendant, there’s only so much time for music. If preparing to play Morrissey from Lithuania seems like a culture clash, then consider this: within two weeks of waving goodbye to the rainy streets of Stretford, Lowden was packing his bags for Dunkirk to play RAF pilot Collins, who fights to keep the German Luftwaffe at bay in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster war epic.
“And those two weeks were spent trying to strip dye from my hair because everything had been dyed jet black,” he laughs. “Even my eyelashes had to be sorted because we were doing Imax. I had to get them tinted three times.”
The contrast in roles wasn’t as jarring as you might expect – Lowden says that playing a character who shut himself away in his bedroom was actually good preparation for scenes in which he is isolated in his cockpit. Plus, I point out, he also went from playing a pop icon to acting alongside one.
“What, Harry?” laughs Lowden, who’s clearly got to know enough of One Direction star Harry Styles to puncture any pop star mystique. He thinks Styles did a good job as British army private Alex, though: “I thought it was a really brave thing for him to do. If he wants to have a pop at acting then he should.”
I ask whether Lowden thinks Styles is the Morrissey of today, which stumps him for a brief second. “No, I don’t think so,” he decides.
So who is then? “You know, I just don’t think there is one. He was incredibly unique.”
And on that detail at least, you would have to say that Lowden has come to know Morrissey pretty well.
England is Mine opens in the UK on 4 August.
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