From Little Women to Brooklyn, we’ve watched Saoirse Ronan fall in love on screen again and again. But in real life, Ronan has gotten to enjoy her own fairytale romance.
Since 2018, the Oscar nominee has been in a relationship with Scottish actor Jack Lowden, who she first met on the set of Mary Queen of Scots, in which they both starred. Since then, the pair have kept their relationship mostly under wraps, even managing to secretly tie the knot in July 2024, with a “low-key” ceremony in Edinburgh.
So, who exactly is Jack Lowden, and have he and Ronan worked on other projects together? Ahead, see everything we know about the Scottish actor.
He was born in England, but spent his life in Scotland.
Lowden is a proud Scotsman, who rarely gets to use his native accent for roles (except for Dunkirk, which he says took some convincing when it came to director Christopher Nolan). But while he spent most of his childhood growing up in the village of Oxton, Lowden was actually born in England.
He shared the reason behind this in an interview with The Standard, where he said, “I’m an IVF baby. And so is my brother. Down there [in England] was one of the few places that was doing it.”
However, despite his English birthplace, Lowden often speaks of his Scottish roots. When asked about Oxton, he told The Standard, “It’s a place I’m enormously proud of.” He even set up a production studio there called Reiver Pictures. He adds, “I want to shoot more stuff there and have more of a hand in it. I want to make as much work in Scotland as possible.”
Currently, he resides in the Scottish Borders, where he has lived since 2021.
He started out in dance, but quickly switched to acting.
Lowden isn’t the only artistic one in the family. In fact, his brother, Calum, is a professional dancer, currently serving as a principal ballet dancer in the Royal Swedish Ballet. And Lowden got his start in dancing, too.
“When my younger brother and I were something like eight or nine years old, our parents took us to see Michael Flatley in Manchester,” Lowden told The Herald. “I think the pair of us came out of that and went ‘We’ve got to learn Irish dancing.’ Mum and dad found a place in Edinburgh and Calum and I were the only two boys in the class because we wanted to learn to tap dance like Michael Flatley.”
However, Lowden quickly realized that dancing wasn’t his passion. “I was awful and was sort of quickly encouraged to maybe not dance in the shows but narrate them,” he told Casting Networks. “I narrated everything from Alice in Wonderland to Sleeping Beauty to entertain the adults who’d come to watch their kids dance. That’s how I fell in love with the stage.”
He once dreamed of being a professional soccer player.
While Lowden has found quite a lot of success in acting, it turns out that his original dream was to be a professional soccer (or, as they say across the pond, “football”) player.
“I wanted to be a footballer,” he told The Standard. “It absolutely broke my heart when I realized I wasn’t going to be one.”
What was the moment he realized this? “Every time I played, it was against people who were better,” he said. “But if someone waved a wand and I was able to play football really well, I’d bite their hand off and do that, over [acting].”
He began acting from a young age and later studied it in college.
As previously noted, Lowden realized his interest in performing when he started narrating shows as a young kid. Then, his interest in the medium only continued to grow. At the age of 10, his parents enrolled him in the Scottish Youth Theatre in Edinburgh, and then he got a Bachelor of Arts in acting from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2011.
“I went to drama school, and I got a job in a play for the National Theatre of Scotland that toured in the States. It was wonderful,” he told Casting Networks. “I just sort of fell into it and can’t remember wanting to do anything else. I worked out very early that it was what I could do, rather than what I dreamt of doing. It sort of became what I dreamt of doing. I think that the most useful thing in life is to work out what you can do. It’s very easy to work on what you want to do.”
Throughout his career, Lowden has worked on a number of high-profile projects, including Dunkirk, Mary Queen of Scots, Fighting With My Family, and Benediction.
He met Saoirse on the set of Mary Queen of Scots.
Like many Hollywood couples, Lowden and Ronan’s romance began where you’d most expect it to: on set.
The couple starred together in the 2018 period drama Mary Queen of Scots, in which Ronan portrayed the titular historical figure, while Lowden played the queen’s second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.
However, Lowden is very private when it comes to his relationship with Ronan. When asked about their coupling in The Standard, he said, “Oh I’m not going to talk about that. I don’t like talking about that side of life.”
Still, he did respond when asked if he gave the Little Women star any tips for improving her accent while filming Mary Queen of Scots. “No! God, no. I wouldn’t ever,” he responded. “There are countless English [projects] I’ve done and if an English actor ever came up to me and said, ‘You should really think about…’ I’d probably hit them in the face.”
He and Saoirse secretly tied the knot in the summer of 2024.
Ronan and Lowden sparked engagement rumors in 2023, when the latter shared an Instagram post in which Ronan appeared to be wearing an engagement ring.
“Ben Vrackie, summit 2759ft,” he captioned the nature-filled carousel. “So not classed as a Munro, but a Corbett. Steep, beautiful path, unparalleled views of Perthshire, and the heather starting to put her purple on. Or…her OUT out outfit. 🏴❤️.” In one of the photos, followers could see Ronan’s hand, which clearly had a sparkler on that finger.
Then, in July 2024, it was reported by Irish Independent that the pair had secretly wed with a “low-key” ceremony in Edinburgh. Apparently, “only a handful of the couple’s closest friends were present” and “all the guests were sworn to secrecy.” Still, the cat was out of the bag when outlets like People managed to get their hands on the registry records.
He’s continued to work with Saoirse on other projects.
Ronan gave rare insight into their relationship in October 2024, when she talked to USA Today about working on The Outrun together, in which she starred and they both served as producers. “Jack is a lot calmer than I am,” she said. “He’s my voice of reason. But as a duo, we’ve both been on film sets our whole lives, so we have an appreciation of what we’re asking actors to do. We always want them to feel safe.”
As to whether they’d ever star in a movie together again, Ronan added, “Jack didn’t want to for a long time, but I’ve now convinced him that’s a great idea. I’d really like to do something together on stage.”
