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Actor

1956-01-11 · Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, UK · Female

30 series in the catalog

Phyllis Logan (born 11 January 1956) is a Scottish actress, widely known for her roles as Lady Jane Felsham in Lovejoy (1986–1993) and Mrs Hughes in Downton Abbey (2010–2015). She won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for the 1983 film Another Time, Another Place and was nominated for BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for the same film. Her other film appearances include Secrets & Lies (1996), Shooting Fish (1997), Downton Abbey (2019) and Misbehaviour (2020).

Early life and education

Logan was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, and grew up nearby Johnstone. Her father, David, was a Rolls-Royce engineer and a trade-union leader and became the secretary of his local branch of the AUEW (Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers). Logan is the youngest in her family and has a brother and a sister. Her father died at the age of 59 while she was at drama school.

Logan 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 Logan 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 Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles in 1984. She was also nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Before her success in Downton Abbey, in which she played the housekeeper Mrs Hughes, Logan was widely known for the role of Lady Jane Felsham, co-starring with Ian McShane, for eight years in nearly fifty episodes of Lovejoy, a comedy-drama for television.

Her character in Downton Abbey, Mrs Hughes, was voted the best Downton Abbey character of all time in a poll conducted by RadioTimes.com (the official website of Radio Times).

She also starred in the 1996 Mike Leigh film Secrets & Lies alongside Timothy Spall and Brenda Blethyn. Logan provided the broadcast voice of Ingsoc in a film version of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) and the Loch Ness Monster (Nessie) 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.

Logan played Maggie Smart in The Good Karma Hospital (7 episodes, 2017–2018) on the ITV drama series which was later made available on Acorn TV. She also starred in a main role as Linda Hutchinson in the ITV drama series Girlfriends which was created and directed by Kay Mellor, alongside Miranda Richardson and Zoë Wanamaker.

She played Andinio in "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos", the tenth episode in the eleventh series of Doctor Who.

She starred as Maggie Lynch in the second series of the television series Guilt, which was shown on both BBC Two and BBC Scotland in 2021. At the British Academy Scotland Awards 2022, Logan won the award for Best Actress – Television for the role. She also starred in the third and final series which was released in April 2023, premiering on BBC Scotland on 25 April 2023.

In 2024, she played Grace Bain in series 8 of Shetland.

In 2025, she played the leading role Cora Felton aka The Puzzle Lady in the first season of Murder Most Puzzling, a television mini-series adaptation of the best-selling murder mystery books by American author Parnell Hall. Logan described the series, written by Dominique Moloney, as "a bit like Murder She Wrote meets Miss Marple on steroids". Logan’s real-life husband, Kevin McNally, plays her character’s love-interest.

Personal life

Logan met her now-husband, actor Kevin McNally, in the 1994 mini-series Love and Reason. They married in 2011 and have one son. They live in Chiswick.

She supports several charities that promote the welfare of dementia patients, and she is also a supporter of SSPCA.

Baggage as Fiona

Coming Alive on BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio Shakespeare: Macbeth (Dramatised) on BBC Radio 3 as Lady Macbeth

R.L. Stevenson's Weir Of Hermiston on BBC Radio 4 as Kirstie

Classic BBC Radio Horror: Dracula on BBC Radio 4

Dr Finlay: Adventures of a Black Bag on BBC Radio 4

Awards and nominations

In addition to the role-related awards listed below, Logan is 2023 winner of the St Andrew's Society of New York's Mark Twain Award in honour of her significant and positive impact on the Scots community around the world.

Phyllis Logan at the TCM Movie Database (archived)