Quick Facts
Biography
Phyllis Logan (born 11 January 1956) is a Scottish actress, known for playing Lady Jane Felsham in Lovejoy (1986–93) and Mrs Hughes (later Carson) in Downton Abbey (2010–15). She won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for the 1983 film Another Time, Another Place. Her other film appearances include Secrets & Lies (1996) and Shooting Fish (1997).
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 (1983), 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 (1984) and the Loch Ness Monster in the animated film Freddie as F.R.O.7 (1992). 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 (7 episodes, 2017-2018) 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.
Awards and nominations
| Year | Association | Category | Nominated work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 | Taormina Film Fest | Golden Mask | Another Time, Another Place | Won |
| 1984 | Evening Standard British Film Awards | Best Actress | Another Time, Another Place | Won |
| 1984 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Actress | Another Time, Another Place | Nominated |
| 1984 | BAFTA Awards | Most Outstanding Newcomer to Film | Another Time, Another Place | Won |
| 1986 | David di Donatello Awards | Best Foreign Actress | Another Time, Another Place | Nominated |
| 2013 | Screen Actors Guild Award | Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | Downton Abbey | Won |
| 2014 | Screen Actors Guild Award | Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | Downton Abbey | Nominated |
| 2015 | Screen Actors Guild Award | Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | Downton Abbey | Won |
| 2016 | Screen Actors Guild Award | Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | Downton Abbey | Won |
| 2017 | Screen Actors Guild Award | Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | Downton Abbey | Nominated |
