Become a Member
Life

Jason Isaacs:A man of many roles

Best-known as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, Jason Isaacs is now starring in the new Netflix series The OA. Jennifer Lipman talked to the actor who always keeps his suitcase packed.

January 12, 2017 15:10
Lucius-purebloods-19262802-1574-2100-a
6 min read

Its first thing in the morning when I speak to Jason Isaacs, and already the Liverpool-born, North London-raised actor  star of Brotherhood and now the new Netflix series The OA  has been up and about for hours. 

He’s clearly someone who thrives on being busy; in the past year he has made four films on top of his television work, and travelled between New York, India, Australia and Canada.

“I’ve got a lot of air miles,” the father of two jokes of his peripatetic existence. “It’s a strange lifestyle.”

The 53-year-old, perhaps best known as Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter, says he tries to turn work down “when I can bear it” in order to spend more time with his family (his partner of nearly 30 years is documentary filmmaker Emma Hewitt). That’s an enviable position for an actor to be in. But Isaacs, while not necessarily a household name, has worked near constantly since leaving drama school, which he attended after studying law at Bristol University following Haberdashers’ (he is occasionally associated with Jewish alumni David Baddiel and Sacha Baron Cohen, and was a peer of film critic Mark Kermode).