Social Innovation
The Incredible Good Fortune of Sam Heughan
As his fame soars, the Scottish actor explains why he is rallying his fans to change the world — and their own lives in the process.
Heughan in Malibu
© Steven Lippman
The picture with the car seems like an afterthought; the actual photo shoot has wrapped. Hands have been shaken, cheeks kissed, thank-yous imparted, empty soda cans crushed and dumped in a plastic bag. The stylist, the groomer, the publicist, the photographer and his three assistants, the friend-slash-business-partner and the videographer have all picked their way down the slippery and bulbous sandstone that juts from the spine of California’s Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu to the trailhead, where actor Sam Heughan is changing out of sweaty workout clothes in an RV.
Heughan (or probably his publicist) would like to get a quick shot of him with the Audi R8 Spyder on loan for his stay in Los Angeles. Afterward, Heughan will get behind the wheel, with his friend-slash-business-partner riding shotgun, and maneuver the $180,000 supercar (yes, the kind Tony Stark drives in "Iron Man 2") down five miles of switchbacks on Corral Canyon Road before turning left onto the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down, toward Santa Monica and a couple days of hard-earned downtime.
The 38-year-old Scot is best known as kilt-wearing, honor-defending, auburn-haired Highland warrior Jamie Fraser in the hit Starz series "Outlander," based on the wildly popular history/fantasy/romance novels by Diana Gabaldon. The show has launched a bazillion thirsty Pinterest boards devoted to Heughan’s blue eyes, his impossible cheekbones, his cleft chin, his knees, his chiseled torso, his hands and pretty much anything else you can imagine. Then there’s the NSFW fan fiction. Now, with several high-profile new film roles, Heughan is rapidly morphing from cult icon to mainstream star — all while spearheading an unlikely passion project designed to transform people’s lives. And it seems to be working.
In the picture, Heughan posts the day after the Malibu photo shoot, the 6'3" actor stands on the driver's side of the Audi in a slightly rumpled gray denim shirt and jeans, gazing through tortoise shell Garrett Leight sunglasses into the distance. The late-July sky is an astounding blue, you can see the marine layer rising off the Pacific, and four desiccated stalks of chapparal yucca stand stiffly behind him as if they couldn’t get out of the way in time.
The post will garner hundreds of thousands of comments, likes and retweets. Heughan’s "Outlander" co-star Caitriona Balfe will razz him on Twitter with the hashtag #grannydriver. Celebrity websites will rush out stories pieced together from their ensuing Twitter conversation. Fans will swoon at the adorableness of it all.
Heughan is OK with all of this, even though it’s a level of attention he didn’t sign up for. Because a thing you need to know about Sam Heughan is that he believes he is very lucky. In fact, he almost can’t believe how lucky he is (“You start looking over your shoulder . . .”). It’s not that he doesn’t work hard: He endured years of rejection before his big break, he turns himself inside out for every role, and the demands on his time are more intense than ever. But still. He is lucky he got cast in "Outlander," which changed his life entirely — the scripts, the offers, the Audi waiting for him in any city he visits. He is lucky he has amazing fans; people really listen to him now. And he is lucky he was brought up in such an idyllic part of the world.
In Google satellite view, the village of New Galloway in the southwest of Scotland where Heughan grew up looks like a tiny whitecap in a big green sea. Heughan and his older brother, Cirdan, were raised by their artist mother, Chrissie. His father was not in the picture for most of the life Heughan remembers (something he prefers not to discuss), but it was a tight-knit, supportive community, the kind where doors were left unlocked and there was always a get-together with music and food and revelry. The family home was a restored outbuilding near the ruins of Kenmure Castle less than a mile south of town. Chrissie made ends meet with a patchwork of jobs, but Heughan mostly remembers her doing her art. “She instilled in me how tough it would be as an artist,” Heughan says. “How difficult it is to make a career out of it. Probably my work ethic as well, that you have to work hard to get something.”
He had a wild imagination and was awestruck when Highlander reenactment groups would come through town in summer. “I was like, ‘This is what they do every day! They just fight and pretend to be soldiers.’ It was kind of cool,” he says. There’s an anecdote that appears in nearly every story about Heughan’s childhood that has begun to feel almost mythic: He’d scramble amongst the crumbling ruins pretending to be one of King Arthur’s knights or Robert the Bruce, the 14th-century King of Scots and national hero, brandishing a sword he’d hammered together out of scrap wood.
Heughan was still years away from hunk status and his own outsize Highlander alter ego. Back then he wore chunky glasses with thick lenses (“I had very bad eyesight — still do”) and considered himself “slightly overweight.” It was also around this time that he thought it would be cool to be a magician when he grew up. “I used to go to these magic shops and buy decks of cards and try and learn tricks.” But whenever there was a gathering, Chrissie would stand him up and make him perform — which was not his favorite. “I hated the attention,” he says.
Heughan in "Outlander"
© Aimee Spinks/Starz/Sony Pictures Television
The family moved to Edinburgh when Heughan was 12, and he attended a Rudolf Steiner school (the kind of place where things like individuality and social consciousness are nurtured equally alongside academics) and got involved in the Royal Lyceum’s Youth Theatre program, first behind the scenes and then on stage. After high school he indulged a couple years of wanderlust before auditioning for the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now known as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He got in on his second try and was still a student when he was cast in a West End production of the play "Outlying Islands" by David Greig, for which he received a 2003 Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Most Promising Performer. It was another 10 years before he would be cast in "Outlander," after a steady string of small movie and TV roles, a stint as Batman in a touring stage production and several pilot seasons in Los Angeles.
In 2013, Heughan returned to the United Kingdom with little to show after yet another pilot season and wondered how much longer he could live out of a duffel bag, not knowing where his next check would come from. Just weeks before he was cast in "Outlander" he found himself adrift in existential reckoning: "What do I even want? Do I want a family? Do I need to work in a bar again? Can I do this for the rest of my life?"
"The Spy Who Dumped Me"
© Lionsgate Entertainment
A week before the Malibu car photo, Sam Heughan and I shake hands in the light-filled lobby of his Soho hotel in New York City on a July afternoon. In the heat, his real-life brownish-blondish hair is starting to hint at unruliness. He is relaxed during our conversation in the hotel’s outdoor courtyard, leaning back in his chair and pulling a knee up to his chest and never once checking his phone. He considers my questions carefully, answering in long paragraphs and stifling occasional yawns, having flown in from Glasgow the day prior, shortly after wrapping Season 4 of "Outlander," which will start airing in November. “There was a wrap party Saturday,” he says, power-eating a protein bar like maybe he hasn’t had lunch. “It was fun, but I was exhausted.”
It’s a lot of work, being this lucky. Tomorrow is day one of back-to-back interviews for his first major feature film, "The Spy Who Dumped Me," starring Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon. In a few days he’ll fly to Los Angeles, where, among other things, he will talk to more journalists; he will appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"; he will devote several hours to climbing rocks and pedaling a mountain bike in stifling heat on a Malibu hillside at the photo shoot for this story; he will walk the red carpet for the "Spy" premiere; and he will carve out regular gym time to bulk up (“trying to get as big as possible”) for his next movie, "Bloodshot," with Vin Diesel, based on the Valiant comic.
Heughan didn’t get into acting for the endless press junkets, the constant attention, the talking about it all. The way he saw it, it would be an escape, a chance to embody someone else. “You’re hiding behind a character,” he says. “You’re not yourself.” (The real Sam Heughan is quite boring according to Sam Heughan. When he looks in the mirror, he doesn’t see what all the fuss is about.)
“It’s funny,” he says. “Acting is probably 5 percent of the job. Doing the actual thing you want to do is the smallest part. Sometimes you wish, ‘God, I just want to do my job and go home and switch off.’” Exactly what constitutes switching off is something he is careful not to overshare. “I don’t give away too much,” he says. He is passionate about fitness and the outdoors and is a natural athlete. He has numerous marathons and triathlons under his belt and has relied on disciplines like Muay Thai, Krav Maga, CrossFit and Olympic lifting to build muscle. The satisfaction he gets from setting goals and pushing himself, and the enormous effort he puts into preparing his body for his onscreen projects — that’s the stuff he doesn’t mind pulling back the curtain for. And as his star has risen, he’s thought a lot about what it means when he puts something out into the world. When you’re this lucky, you have a responsibility, right?
“You have to work out how you want to present yourself,” he says. “Who are you? What do you stand for?” For Heughan, this began to crystallize about eight years ago. He was on a celebrity running team that supported Bloodwise, a U.K.-based leukemia and lymphoma charity. During a gala fundraiser for the organization at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Heughan was blown away by the resilience of some of the kids with cancer who shared their stories. “That kind of strength is something I would love to have,” he says. He now serves as president of Bloodwise Scotland.
Another epiphany came when he moved back to Scotland in 2013 to shoot "Outlander" (he’d been based in London for a decade or so). “I fell in love again with the country that I was born and brought up in,” he says, “and how rewarding it was to go climb and hike.” He started posting snippets of his workouts and sharing his goals and his efforts to bag Munros (Scottish peaks of 3,000 feet or higher). Fans ate it up, pledged money to support Bloodwise, and, buoyed by his enthusiasm, many started pushing themselves to bag their own figurative “peaks.”
Heughan realized he had an opportunity not only to do something special for fans but to rally them to make a difference — an opportunity to take all the attention that was focused on him and redirect it toward a greater good. By late 2015, along with his Glasgow-based trainer, John Valbonesi, he had formalized the idea for My Peak Challenge, a program that empowers participants to set a goal (fitness or otherwise) and get the support to achieve it while raising money for charity.
Recharging in the outdoors
© Steven Lippman
Although their numbers might be small by Cumberbitch or Belieber standards, Heughligans are a loyal and passionate group. And not just because of the eye candy. "He's a handsome fella, I'm not gonna lie," says Kim Lovelady, 46, a general manager for a copy company in Kansas City, Missouri, and a co-founder of the official Heughan’s Heughligans fan community, which has about 60,000 Facebook followers, mostly women. “From the day he was cast as Jamie, he just seemed genuine and kind,” she says. “He wanted to do right by longtime 'Outlander' book fans, to get the character right. You can tell he has a good soul.”
Thousands of Heughligans from around the world have helped transform his casual call to action into a global movement. To date My Peak Challenge has around 10,000 active members from 80 countries, has raised $1.5 million and was able to fully fund a clinical research trial through Bloodwise. Half the $119 yearly membership fee goes straight to Bloodwise, as well as Marie Curie, a U.K.-based hospice organization. MPC also raised enough money last year to underwrite the first full-time director for Cahonas Scotland, an organization that educates people about testicular cancer, a disease that has directly affected Heughan’s family. (MPC members also raise money independently for these and other personal causes; the Heughligans and additional "Outlander" fan communities do their own fundraisers through merchandise sales and other campaigns.)
In return, MPC participants receive a customizable 12-month daily training program developed by Valbonesi, complete with step-by-step exercise tutorials and regular motivational videos starring Sam. There’s also a daily meal plan with detailed recipes (and vegetarian options) from nutrition experts that includes some of Heughan’s favorites, written, seemingly, in his own words: “Slice up sweet potatoes . . . Throw on a tray . . . Bake until yummy!”
They also get access to a private Facebook group where MPC staffers help troubleshoot and fellow Peakers give virtual high fives and provide accountability. Heughan frequently pops in. “I’m there pretty much every day, even if I’m not commenting,” he says. “I try to interact as much as possible.” Last year there was an organized gathering in Scotland — roughly a thousand Peakers from all over the world paid their own way to Glasgow for a weekend of hiking, group training at Valbonesi’s Everyday Athlete Gym and a formal gala where they had the opportunity to meet Heughan himself. Tickets to the weekend sold out in seven minutes. Plans for a spring 2019 event are in the works.
It’s this blend of sincerity, access and common ground that makes MPC work. “You feel like you have a personal connection to Sam,” says Lauren Martino, a radio promoter and personal trainer in Nashville who joined MPC in 2016. “Even if it’s not in person, it’s still motivation. And it’s like we have our own little community. If you’re just not feeling it one day, there is always someone to push you.” The 30-year-old Martino credits MPC with being the catalyst that got her to finally earn her personal- training certification last October. “It was always in my mind off in the distance,” she says. “It was one of my ‘peaks’ that I wanted to reach. And now I have.” Martino gets fired up seeing posts from other Peakers across the globe. “It makes the world feel smaller,” she says. “And it makes me feel like a part of it. I really enjoy that.”
Follow his lead
© Steven Lippman
Heughan could easily have lent his name to any number of organizations doing good work. The path he’s chosen is exponentially harder and will succeed only if he can continue to fully commit. He still handles his own social media accounts (“It’s manageable at the moment ...”). Leveraging his social platform does come with downsides, though. Trolls, for one. People “have dug into the private lives of myself or loved ones or people I know,” he says. “I feel that’s invasive. It’s pretty horrific, actually.” Politics, for another. He generally holds back publicly but sometimes wonders if he’s censoring himself. When he retweeted an article supporting Trump protesters in London during the American president’s visit this past July, his mentions lit up with the standard kerfuffle about how actors should stick to acting, to which he responded (in part): “Everyone is entitled to an opinion,” and traded friendly, diplomatic replies with a few detractors.
Heughan knows there would be no MPC without social media and says the majority of fans are “amazing.” He hates to let them down, like when he had to cancel appearances at "Outlander"-related conventions this past summer (“I feel really bad — I do”), or when there was an outcry over his onscreen interpretation of a pivotal scene that departed from its depiction in the novel. “It was a choice. There are thousands of decisions we make as actors in our portrayals all the time. We wanted to get things right,” he says. “It hurt a little bit.”
I'd like to be remembered as someone who made a difference.
Even in his wildest imagination, Heughan didn’t expect that his little idea would have such a big impact. And not once did he anticipate the common ground it would create. “The most exciting part is actually not about the fitness,” he says. “It’s the community. People share so much — their challenges and their successes and failures and their day-to-day thoughts; their family. I think there’s nothing like that.”
Heughan has no problem admitting that he’s prepared to work in a bar again “if it all comes crashing down.” That seems unlikely. As I write this, his name keeps popping up as maybe the next James Bond; his Instagram just ticked over a million followers (growing by thousands a day); and he has his own line of clothing for Barbour. In 2017, Hollywood news blog "Just Jared" ranked Heughan the seventh-most-popular celebrity on its site based on page views and comments (ahead of megastars like Rihanna, Beyoncé and Brad Pitt), which is pretty remarkable considering that Heughan is still not totally a household name. It won’t be long, though.
In the meantime, there’s the MPC spring gala to plan, ambitious membership goals to hit (15,000 by 2019; 100,000 by 2025) and a scheme to recruit local ambassadors in communities around the world. He’d like MPC to branch out into some educational initiatives, and to bring in more charities so members have choices for where they direct their money. He also has a fledgling side business called the Great Glen Company, which will make and sell products tied to his Scottish identity — a limited-edition whisky, a porridge (Heughan is passionate about both) — all with a charitable footprint of some kind.
Then there’s the "Bloodshot" movie, a possible second film he’s excited about but can’t discuss (“Touch wood!”) and more scripts and offers. Plus at least two more seasons of Jamie Fraser. After "Outlander," “that’s the question,” he says. “What’s it going to be?”
This is, of course, unknowable right now. And even as his fanbase keeps growing, and the roles and opportunities keep coming, Heughan is drawn to the simpler stuff. He’s eager to get back to his first love, the theater. A family would be nice. And at some point, “a real timeout. I dream of a little place on the water or on a loch in Scotland,” he says. “An escape place with a canoe somewhere.”
And if it all comes crashing down? “I’d like to be remembered as someone who made a difference and left the world a better place,” he says. “And was a reasonably good actor.”
That’s a legacy he'd feel lucky to earn.