Alex Macqueen is good at making authority look awkward. We rate his comic precision, but the steady supply of pompous officials and eccentric fathers can obscure how useful he is in nastier parts.
Fi1m perspective
Alex Macqueen is often the man with a title who makes authority look faintly ridiculous. Julius Nicholson, the Prime Minister’s blue-skies adviser in The Thick of It (2005), established that territory early. His comfort with improvisation suits Armando Iannucci’s habit of developing scenes on set. He keeps his characters consistent, which matters when the dialogue has room to change: we need to believe that the man existed before somebody thought of the joke.
In the Loop (2009) gives him Sir Jonathan Tutt and places him among officials whose wounded pride can shape the prospect of war. We laughed at the bullying, then felt uneasy about how much we were enjoying it. Iannucci is a useful director for an actor who can hold an eccentric character steady within a busy ensemble. The relentless insults sometimes crowd out the people delivering them, though we would still recommend the film readily.
With Kevin Sutherland, Neil’s dad in The Inbetweeners (2008), the same aptitude for awkwardness moves into the family. Damon Beesley and Iain Morris build the comedy around adolescent boasting, and the four leads’ timing does much of the work. It is another ensemble worth keeping company with, despite the writing’s narrow view of girls. The reservation about Macqueen’s casting is different: a procession of eccentric fathers and weak men can be limiting, and these are the sorts of parts he has sought to move beyond.
The lead in the psychological thriller The Hide (2008), Roy Tunt, offers a counterexample, allowing him to give an unsympathetic figure some depth. Julia Davis’s black period comedy Hunderby (2012), with Macqueen as Edmund, provides another direction, followed by a lead part in Sally4Ever (2018). His pleasure in playing eccentricity and villainy helps explain why Davis is a productive collaborator: the nastiness gives him more to do. We would rather see that appetite encouraged than another variation on the awkward father.
Biography
Alex Macqueen is an English actor. Born on 30 November 1973 in Epsom, Surrey, he was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead, and read English at Collingwood College, Durham University, before taking an MPhil at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
He began acting after time with the National Youth Theatre and early work in business affairs and politics. Macqueen is known for recurring television roles including Keith Greene in Holby City (2005–2010), Julius Nicholson in The Thick of It (2005–2012), and Kevin Sutherland in The Inbetweeners (2008–2010). He played Sir Jonathan Tutt in the film In the Loop (2009), directed by Armando Iannucci, and has appeared in Four Lions (2010), The Inbetweeners Movie (2011), Youth (2015), and Cinderella (2015).
