Sam Heughan

Sam Roland Heughan (/ˈhjuːən/; born 30 April 1980) is a Scottish actor, producer, author, and entrepreneur. He is best known for his starring role as Jamie Fraser in the Starz drama series Outlander (2014–present) for which he has won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Cable Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actor and the Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television, and received a nomination for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series.

Heughan has also starred in films such as the spy comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) and the superhero action film Bloodshot (2020). He was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Most Promising Performer for his performance in Outlying Islands performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs.[1][2]

Heughan and his Outlander co-star Graham McTavish co-wrote Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare, and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other[3] which reached number one on the New York Times' Best Seller List for hardcover nonfiction, and combined print and e-book nonfiction in November 2020.[4] The same year Heughan launched his own whisky brand, The Sassenach (named after his Outlander character's nickname for his wife, Claire[5]), winning consecutive double golds in the 2020 and 2021 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

Education and early life

Sam Roland Heughan was born on 30 April 1980 in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. His parents had been part of a hippie community in London called Gandalf's Garden which was heavily influenced by the works of J. R. R. Tolkien inspiring them to name Heughan and his older brother after characters from The Lord of the Rings.[citation needed] Sam's mother, Chrissie Heughan, an artist and artisan papermaker struggled to raise the two brothers after their father left when they were both young.[6]

Aged five, Heughan moved from Balmaclellan to nearby New Galloway where he attended Kells Primary School. During this time he lived in converted stables in the grounds of Kenmure Castle.[7] Moving to Edinburgh at age twelve he attended James Gillespie's High School for a year and then the Edinburgh Rudolf Steiner School until the end of the sixth year.[8] He joined the Lyceum Youth theatre in 1998[9][10] and in 1999 was awarded a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) in Glasgow, graduating in 2003.[7][11]

While enrolled at RSAMD Heughan performed in numerous plays including The Twits at Citizens Theatre, an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, Aeschylus's Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound, and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.[12][13][14] In 2002, shortly before graduating, Heughan was one of four students chosen to represent RSAMD at the BBC Carleton Hobbs radio talent competition.[15][16] His alma mater, the RCS, awarded him an honorary doctorate at the class of 2022 graduation ceremony.[17]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Heughan