Happy Birthday the Scottish actor Peter Mullan born 2 November 1959 in Peterhead.
I love Peter's work and rate him as highly as Brian Cox and If ever there was a story of rags to riches it is Peter Mullan, born in Peterhead the family later moved to Mosspark in Glasgow.
Mullans father was a drunken violent man but despite this Peter did well at school, at least till the age of 14 when the climate at home forced him out onto the streets and into a gang, spending less and less time at school. In his own words he was aggressively lobotomising himself but admitted he kept up his reading on the sly "You couldnae tell the gang you were reading Carl Jung." he said.
I'm not sure his heart was in the gang culture as he says he was "kicked out" after a couple of years, he returned to school and sailed through his Highers and started at Glasgow University at 17. His dad died of lung cancer on his first day.
Mullan studied economic history and drama and despite suffering a nervous breakdown in his final year still managed to graduate. He went on to teach drama at Borstals, prisons and community centres while becoming involved in the left-wing theatre movement that flourished in Scotland in the 1980s. In 1987 he made his professional acting debut with the Wildcat theatre company in a political pantomime.
Bit parts in Scottish films and TV series followed, The Steamie, Taggart, of course, and Rab C Nesbitt, as well as The Big Man and in Braveheart, he uttered the words, "We didn't come here to fight for the" Danny Boyle, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting were another two films that Mullan served his apprenticeship in.
The breakthrough came when Ken Loach chose him in the title role of "My Name is Joe" he gave a brilliant portrayal Jekyll-and-Hyde character , a recovering alcoholic whose humanity and warmth masked a frightening capacity for brutality. He won his first award at Cannes as Best Actor for the role.
Around the same time Mullan was starting to get into directing, three surreal comic dramas set in the Glaswegian working-class world and then his first full length film, he not only directed but wrote the excellent Orphans an odyssey of four working-class siblings roving round Glasgow in the 24 hours after their mother dies. Channel Four, who funded the film chose not to distribute it as they didn't think it would attract a large commercial audience.
The film however was shown at Film festivals around Europe and won numerous awards, in interviews, Mullan has said that once Orphans started winning awards Channel Four apologised and asked if they could distribute it, an offer he refused.
Since then Peter Mullan has not looked back, directing and penning The Magdalene Sisters and Neds as well as starring in amongst others, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, War Horse, Hector and Tommy's Honour, on the small screen he was one of the main characters in ITV series The Fixer, The BBC Two drama Top of the Lake, and in the excellent drama series Gunpowder.
Peter appeared as Jacob Snell in the first two seasons of the Netflix series Ozark, all three series of the BBC Two sitcom Mum and a recurring role in the popular TV reboot of Westworld. He has also starred in the Netflix fantasy drama Cursed. Mullan starred alongside Colin Farrell and Tom Cortney in the BBC series The North Water.
Peter Mullan was also one of the participants of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Scenes For Survival project, which features talents from the country’s arts industry making lockdown-related short films as a response to the country’s theatres having to close during the coronavirus pandemic.
His film, Fat Baws, is an 18-minute monologue filmed in Peter’s Glasgow home describing a surreal, hilarious and slightly disturbing showdown with a wideboy jackdaw demanding he puts out more of his favourite food, the eponymous fat balls.
Mullan has been busy in the past few years, appearing in TV shows Liaison, Payback, After the Party and LOTR: Rings of Power, as well as the film, Baghead a Horror film which has average reviews on IMDb. Outlander fans look out for him in the spin off series Outlander: Blood of My Blood, a prequel to the popular Starz show, it follows the parents of both protagonists from the original series. Tony Curran is also cast as a younger Lord Lovatt.
He starred in the ITV mini series called The Bombing of Pan Am 103
which focused on the investigation into the crash on both sides of the Atlantic and the devastating effect it had on the small town and the families who lost loved ones.
Peter has five productions ion the go just now, but is in cinemas now in the first class film, I Swear, the true story of a Scottish Borders lad who has Tourrettes Syndrom, go see it, you wont be disspaointed.
