It’s no great secret that Andrew Scott is one of the most versatile actors working today. Whether he’s reenacting the most important conversation ever had about the weather (Pressure), playing every part in a one-man production of a Chekhov classic (Vanya), or living rent-free in all of our heads as The Hot Priest (Fleabag), the man is a true actor’s actor. Now, in Simon Stone’s true-story inspired Elsinore, Scott is an actor playing another actor — namely Chariots Of Fire star Ian Charleson — as he defies HIV complications and fights to play Hamlet in the National Theatre’s 1989 production of William Shakespeare’s legendary tragedy. Check out the emotional trailer below;
Has anyone ever won Best Actor for a trailer before? Sheesh! No wonder Andrew Scott is in the Oscars conversation already. Described in its official synopsis as the “deeply emotional and inspirational true story of Ian Charleson, a gifted actor whose greatest challenge becomes his greatest triumph,” Elsinore — if this first teaser is anything to go by, at least — certainly looks to have the emotion and the inspiration both locked down, with Stone’s movie lending equal weight to the enormity of Charleson’s undertakings as an actor chasing the role of a lifetime and as a man wrestling with his own mortality while doing so. That Scott’s surrounded by a veritable who’s who of British acting talent — from Olivia Colman and Johnny Flynn to Billie Piper, Peter Mullan, Joe Locke, and Monica Dolan — certainly doesn’t hurt the sense of prestige surrounding this festival-favourite drama, either.
While we ultimately know how Charleson’s Hamlet panned out (the film’s synopsis already tells us how “facing his own mortality with unflinching honesty, wit, and grace, Charleson delivers a courageous performance that becomes a source of healing and inspiration for those around him”), and how the actor’s passing aged just 40 in 1990 changed the cultural conversation about AIDS, Elsinore is primed to give the great actor’s story the sensitive, celebratory yet unflinching treatment it deserves. The film doesn’t hit UK cinemas until January 29, 2027, but if you can’t wait until then the movie is the Opening Night Gala screening at the London Film Festival next month, so keep an eye out for tickets if you’re in town.
