Sam Heughan

Sam Roland Heughan (born 30 April 1980) is a Scottish actor, producer, author, and entrepreneur.

Sam Roland Heughan was born on 30 April 1980 in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

His parents had been part of a hippie community in London called Gandalf's Garden which was heavily influenced by the works of J. R. R. Tolkien inspiring them to name Heughan and his older brother after characters from The Lord of the Rings.

Sam's mother, Chrissie Heughan, an artist and artisan papermaker struggled to raise the two brothers after their father left when they were both young.

Aged five, Heughan moved from Balmaclellan to nearby New Galloway where he attended Kells Primary School.

During this time he lived in converted stables in the grounds of Kenmure Castle.

Moving to Edinburgh at age twelve he attended James Gillespie's High School for a year and then the Edinburgh Rudolf Steiner School until the end of the sixth year.

He joined the Lyceum Youth theatre in 1998 and in 1999 was awarded a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) in Glasgow, graduating in 2003.

While enrolled at RSAMD Heughan performed in numerous plays including The Twits at Citizens Theatre, an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, Aeschylus's Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound, and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

In 2002, shortly before graduating, Heughan was one of four students chosen to represent RSAMD at the BBC Carleton Hobbs radio talent competition.

His alma mater, the RCS, awarded him an honorary doctorate at the class of 2022 graduation ceremony.

While still a student at RSAMD Heughan took extended leave of his studies to focus on Outlying Islands, a play by Scottish playwright David Greig.

The play premiered at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh before moving to the Royal Court Theatre in London.

Heughan was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for Most Promising Performer for his performance.

In 2004, Heughan appeared in his first professional television role in the miniseries Island at War, a WWII drama about the German occupation of the Channel Islands.

The following year he appeared in several episodes of the Scottish soap opera River City and portrayed adulterous husband Pony William in David Harrower's play Knives in Hens at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow.

Between 2006 and 2009 Heughan appeared in a number of made-for-television films and miniseries including BBC and PBS's collaborative miniseries The Wild West (2006), Channel 4's docudrama, A Very British Sex Scandal (2007), and BBC Four's Breaking the Mould (2009).

During that time he also made appearances in a number of television series, including an episode of ITV's Midsomer Murders, ITV's crime drama Rebus, and two episodes of BBC's political drama Party Animals.

Between 2007 and 2009 Heughan made appearances in several live productions, including Noël Coward's The Vortex at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Citizens Theatre, Iain F. MacLeod's The Pearlfishers at the Traverse Theatre, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the Dundee Repertory Theatre, Macbeth at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and Nicholas de Jongh's Plague Over England at the Duchess Theatre.

In 2009, Heughan landed a recurring role as Scott Nielson, Nurse Cherry Malone's boyfriend and a secret drug dealer in the BBC soap opera Doctors.

He was nominated for a British Soap Award, in the category Villain of the Year, for his twenty-one episode stint on the series.

The following year, Heughan starred as the title character in the direct-to-video feature Young Alexander the Great, which was filmed in Egypt and explored the life of the teenager who would become Alexander the Great.

He went on to star in BBC's television film First Light, the story of RAF pilot Geoffrey Wellum's experiences flying a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain, as documented in his WWII memoir of the same name. From there he featured in PBS's BAFTA-winning mini-series Any Human Heart, the story of author Logan Mountstuart's life in the context of historical events surrounding him, based upon William Boyd's novel of the same name.

Heughan returned to theatre later that year in dramatist Phyllis Nagy's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr. Ripley at the Royal & Derngate.

Throughout that same year, Heughan portrayed Hugh Tennent, founder of Tennent's Lager, in a series of comical commercials, which won a number of accolades at the Scottish Advertising Awards.

Hallmark Channel's original film A Princess for Christmas starred Heughan as Prince Ashton in 2011, a role which saw him appear opposite Roger Moore and secure a nomination for Most Inspiring Performance in Television at the 20th Annual Grace Awards.

That same year, he featured in Steve Waters' sold-out play Amphibians, a dual story of Olympic swimmers Max and Elsa, at the Bridewell Theatre.

For the next two years he starred as Batman in the touring stage show Batman Live.

During this time he made the news for his assistance in a real-life citizen's arrest.

In 2012, he performed the title role in Shakespeare's King John at the Òran Mór Theatre.

In 2013, Heughan was cast as Jamie Fraser in the Starz time-travel drama series Outlander.

He was the first cast member officially announced, to great praise by the author of the series, Diana Gabaldon, who said, "That man is a Scot to the bone and Jamie Fraser to the heart. Having seen Sam Heughan not just act, but be Jamie, I feel immensely grateful to the production team for their painstaking attention to the soul of the story and characters."

He's played the co-lead role for all seven seasons of the series, and will continue for the eighth and last season, scheduled to film in 2024.

He is best known for his starring role as Jamie Fraser in the Starz drama series Outlander (2014–present) for which he has won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Cable Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actor and the Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television, and received a nomination for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series.

Turning to independent films in 2014, Heughan appeared in the psychological thriller Emulsion, the story of a man haunted by the disappearance of his wife.

Heughan has also starred in films such as the spy comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) and the superhero action film Bloodshot (2020).

He was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Most Promising Performer for his performance in Outlying Islands performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs.

He and his co-star, Caitriona Balfe assumed the additional role of producers on the series in 2019.

Heughan and his Outlander co-star Graham McTavish co-wrote Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare, and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other which reached number one on the New York Times' Best Seller List for hardcover nonfiction, and combined print and e-book nonfiction in November 2020.

The same year Heughan launched his own whisky brand, The Sassenach (named after his Outlander character's nickname for his wife, Claire ), winning consecutive double golds in the 2020 and 2021 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.