Borders film star’s next role will be poetry in motion

Borders film star Jack Lowden’s next role will be in poetry in motion.
Jack Lowden at a BAFTA Awards pre-party in London last week. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)Jack Lowden at a BAFTA Awards pre-party in London last week. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)
Jack Lowden at a BAFTA Awards pre-party in London last week. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)

The Oxton actor has been cast as First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon in a biopic to be directed by Terence Davies for Emu Films.

It’s the Merseyside director’s second life story of a poet in a row, coming after 2016’s A Quiet Passion, about Emily Dickinson.

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Called Benediction, it will chart Sassoon’s rise to acclaim for his poetry while serving on the Western Front as a second lieutenant with the Royal Welch Fusiliers.

“Sassoon had this huge life, and Terence has got it all down,” former Earlston High School pupil Lowden, 29, told the Daily Mail.

Davies added: “He knew everybody. In the 20th century, there isn’t a single person you can name that he didn’t meet, and it’s quite extraordinary.”

The 74-year-old’s previous films include an adaptation in 2000 of the 1905 Edith Wharton novel The House of Mirth part-filmed in the Borders.

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Shooting for Benediction is scheduled to begin in the spring, and it’s expected to be released next year.

In the meanwhile, Lowden, up for a prize at this weekend’s British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards, is set to be seen in two other movies currently in post-production – Fonzo and Corvidae.

The former reunites him with Dunkirk co-star Tom Hardy and also features Matt Dillon and Linda Cardellini. Hardy plays US gangster Al Capone during his time in prison, with the Borderer being cast as a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent.

The latter is a psychological thriller directed by Joe Marcantonio and co-starring Fiona Shaw and Tamara Lawrence.

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