Rise to Fame
Jim Moriarty wasn't supposed to be the best thing about Sherlock. The show was designed around Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes, but Scott's Moriarty, played as a giggling psychopath who found the whole thing amusing, kept stealing episodes whole. The BAFTA came in 2012. The real career pivot came in 2019, when Phoebe Waller-Bridge cast him as the Priest in Fleabag Season 2. One role made him a villain everyone loved. The other made him a romantic lead nobody could quite get over.
In the Spotlight
Ripley (2024) arrived as a vindication. Eight episodes of black-and-white, glacially paced con-artist television that somehow pulled 14 Emmy nominations, including one for Scott as lead actor, plus a Golden Globe nomination and a Peabody. He also starred in All of Us Strangers (2023), a grief film with Paul Mescal that earned him another Golden Globe nomination. Critics called Ripley his finest performance to date. Whether they're right is debatable. Whether he's running out of interesting choices to make is not.
Side Notes
He dropped out of Trinity College Dublin after six months to join the Abbey Theatre, then moved to London at 22. His theater CV runs deep: two Olivier Awards, a Hamlet at the Almeida that ran to packed houses, a solo Vanya in 2023 where he played all eight Chekhov characters alone. He came out as gay in 2013 and has since pushed back on being called an 'openly gay actor,' noting straight actors never get 'openly straight' in their descriptions. He grew up with a lisp bad enough that he took elocution lessons to fix it.