Stars of Tomorrow 2023: Stephen McMillan (actor)

Playing characters who die is something actors typically encounter more as they get older. Dundee-born Stephen McMillan perished nobly in his first screen role at the age of 17 — 2018 historical action film Outlaw King — and has continued along a notably traumatic trajectory, including turns as a self-harming pastry chef in UK indie Boiling Point, and a young deck hand who is sexually assaulted and killed in the Andrew Haigh-directed Arctic seafaring miniseries The North Water.

“I guess I’m able to be vulnerable,” says McMillan, who adds that he landed Outlaw King from an open casting call culminating in an audition where he improvised his character “starting to have a mental breakdown, and crying and shit”. Director David Mackenzie expanded the role, adding the death scene — and the film’s casting director Kahleen Crawford has gone on to work with the actor two more times.

For his latest film The Lesson — a four-hander with Richard E Grant, Julie Delpy and Daryl McCormack, which premiered at Tribeca in June — McMillan plays a young man trying to live up to his “taller, more handsome, smarter” elder brother, who was his family’s favourite but died by suicide.

“He feels very alone,” McMillan says. Acting with his illustrious co-stars was “genuinely inspirational — it was amazing, I got to see three forms of acting in front of me, all are incredible”.

McMillan, now 23, has been busy this year shooting the Boiling Point spinoff TV series, in which his character is further explored, while this May saw the release of Sky Cinema’s Dead Shot, playing a member of an IRA safe-house cell in 1970s London. Among several shorts, 2021’s Mind Yerself — an edge-of-tears, three-minute monologue performed by McMillan, addressing young male mental health and suicide in Scotland — is one he holds particularly dear. “We released it on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and it blew up,” he says. “I’ve had kids aged 11, 12 being like, ‘I’ve watched it, and I feel understood.’”

Occasionally speaking with a stammer, McMillan finds that “it doesn’t really affect me on set, and I’m able to have control over it — which is weird because potentially it’s an anxiety-filled place. But it’s a lot of fun, because I get to improv and I get to act not as me.”

Contact: Florence Rose, Independent Talent