Martin Compston
Martin Compston is an actor, born 1984.
Football came first. Compston was a professional footballer, a defender, before he was an actor, and he was still a teenager when Ken Loach cast him as Liam in Sweet Sixteen in 2002, a film that wanted somebody who could carry Greenock rather than somebody who could act it. Being from there was the qualification.
What followed was a long stretch of hard, unshowy British film work: Stevie in Red Road in 2006, Danny in The Disappearance of Alice Creed in 2009, John O'Hare in the football drama The Damned United the same year, Gorman in Filth. He is very good in small, contained films where the camera barely moves and the tension comes from what a young man decides not to say.
Television made him famous. He has played DS Steve Arnott in Line of Duty since 2012, an anti-corruption detective whose entire function is to sit across a table and ask the same question again, and the show's interrogation scenes are the best argument for what Compston actually does. He listens on camera better than almost anyone in British drama, and he can make a follow-up question sound like an accusation.
Since then he has been a fixture in high-concept British series, Vigil in 2021, The Rig in 2023, Red Eye in 2024, with Mary Queen of Scots and The Aftermath on the film side. He also played Ewan Brodie in Monarch of the Glen, and, away from the credits listed here, Paul Ferris in The Wee Man and Dan Docherty in The Nest.
Movies (16)
- Doomsday (2008)
- Mary Queen of Scots (2018)
- The Aftermath (2019)
- Filth (2013)
- The Damned United (2009)
- The Hunter's Prayer (2017)
- A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)
- The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009)
- Strippers vs. Werewolves (2012)
- Red Mist (2008)
- Tickets (2005)
- Red Road (2006)
- Scottish Mussel (2015)
- The New Ten Commandments (2008)
- The Legend of Barney Thomson (2015)
- Sweet Sixteen (2002)
TV (7)
Where to start with Martin Compston
Take Sweet Sixteen first, because everything else is downstream of it. Compston came to the film from football, and its realism depends on him never looking like he is performing, which he manages for the whole running time.
Line of Duty is why most people are on this page, and the interrogation episodes are the ones to seek out: three or four people at a table, no music, and a scene that turns entirely on who blinks first. He holds the room without ever raising his voice.
If you want the films, Red Road and The Disappearance of Alice Creed are the two worth an evening, both tight, both unpleasant in a productive way, both dependent on him being credible as a young man in over his head. Filth is the loudest thing here, and Vigil and The Rig are the comfortable Sunday-night versions of the same skill, which is fine, and slighter.