James McArdle is a Scottish actor from Glasgow. Working as a child actor in film, he trained at RADA, graduating in 2010. In his graduation year he appeared in Macbeth at the Globe and starred in Anya Reiss's summer hit Spur of the Moment at the Royal Court Theatre in London. He then appeared in such plays as Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country, Mike Bartlett's Chariots of Fire and Platonov, for which he received the Ian Charleson Award.

On screen he is known for such films as Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), '71 (2014) and Salting the Battlefield (2014).