Phyllis Logan


Phyllis Logan is a Scottish actress, known for playing Lady Jane Felsham in Lovejoy and Mrs Hughes in Downton Abbey. She won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for the 1983 film Another Time, Another Place. Her other film appearances include Secrets & Lies and Shooting Fish.

Education

Logan was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, and grew up in nearby Johnstone, where she was educated at Johnstone High School. She studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow and graduated with the James Bridie gold medal in 1977.

Career

After graduation, she joined the Dundee Repertory Theatre. She left in 1979 to work on stage in Edinburgh. She also worked regularly on Scottish television. On the BBC Scotland production, The White Bird Passes, she first met writer-director Michael Radford. For his first feature film, Another Time, Another Place, he cast Logan in the leading role of Janie, for which she won a Gold Award for Best Actress at the Taormina Film Festival and the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress in 1983 and the BAFTA Award for the Most Outstanding Newcomer to Film in 1984. Before her success in Downton Abbey, where she played the housekeeper Mrs Hughes, Logan was most identified with the role of Lady Jane Felsham, co-starring with Ian McShane for eight years in nearly 50 episodes of Lovejoy, a comedy-drama for television.
She has also had a part in the 1996 Mike Leigh film Secrets & Lies. Logan provided the broadcast voice of Ingsoc in a film version of Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Loch Ness Monster in the animated film Freddie as F.R.O.7. She was in the radio series Coming Alive and Baggage. She played Inspector Frost's love interest and eventual wife in If Dogs Run Free, the last story in the A Touch of Frost series.
She played Maggie Smart in The Good Karma Hospital on Acorn TV.
She played Andinio in "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos", the tenth episode in the eleventh series of Doctor Who.

Personal life

Logan married actor Kevin McNally and has a son. The family live in Chiswick.

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations

YearAssociationCategoryNominated workResult
1983Taormina Film FestGolden MaskAnother Time, Another Place
1984Evening Standard British Film AwardsBest ActressAnother Time, Another Place
1984British Academy Film AwardsBest ActressAnother Time, Another Place
1984BAFTA AwardsMost Outstanding Newcomer to FilmAnother Time, Another Place
1986David di Donatello AwardsBest Foreign ActressAnother Time, Another Place
2013Screen Actors Guild AwardOutstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama SeriesDownton Abbey
2014Screen Actors Guild AwardOutstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama SeriesDownton Abbey
2015Screen Actors Guild AwardOutstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama SeriesDownton Abbey
2016Screen Actors Guild AwardOutstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama SeriesDownton Abbey
2017Screen Actors Guild AwardOutstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama SeriesDownton Abbey