John Hannah: When I turned 60, I decided to simply accept the cool and interesting things

Scottish actor John Hannah tells Esther McCarthy about his departure from the expected in new action thriller Bad Day At The Office

Thu, 29 Oct, 2026 - 21:00

As a young man, John Hannah had modest expectations of what an acting career might bring.

Having been given a grant to attend acting school, the working-class Scotsman was uncertain whether he could sustain himself in what is a precarious profession. “When I wasn’t working, I’d get housing benefit,” he says.

“That subsidised me through long periods of unemployment in those early years, of which there were plenty. All I wanted to do was maybe a bit of theatre and I dreamt of being in a Ken Loach film. And then The Mummy came along and spoiled it all.”

Hannah is joking, of course. The Mummy was a massive global success, taking over $400 million at the box office when it was released in the summer of 1999 and giving him the kind of international hit that can bring recognition and job security for years to come. It made stars of Brendan Frazer and Rachel Weisz, while Hannah’s quirky explorer Jonathan Carnahan had a strong supporting role — all three of them will return for The Mummy: Book of the Dead, the latest chapter in the adventure caper, next year.

It was the latest in a remarkable run of success for the Scotsman, who had already endeared himself to audiences opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the ‘what if’ romantic drama Sliding Doors. His recital of WH Auden’s Funeral Blues during a moving scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral is one of the most memorable moments in that film.

To say that Hannah’s role in extreme action thriller Bad Day at the Office is a departure is an understatement. British-Chinese filmmaker Chee Keong Cheung’s film, told largely from the perspective of its protagonist, stars Hannah as Karl, who wakes up in a wrecked hotel room with a splitting headache. He has no memory of what’s happened, where he is, or even who he is.

Things get livelier when he discovers a dead body in his bathtub, with two police officers knocking at his door. It sets into motion a series of events that force Karl and hotel maid Molly (Radha Mitchell) into a deceptive world of confusion and conspiracy, with many in murderous pursuit.

The night before we speak, he has seen the completed film for the first time at a midnight audience screening. Having been up since 3am for an early flight that day, it was an experience.

“It was really mind blowing, disconcerting, weird, strange, fabulous. It was an experience and a half. I was kind of surprised at how much the audience enjoyed the humour of it, how much they got as a laugh. I thought that was cool.”

Four years ago, John Hannah turned 60, and decided that while he was very content with his career so far, he wanted to take on new and unique projects. Bad Day at the Office, he says, was: “Unlike anything I’d ever seen, never mind anything I’d ever done”, and he was keen to nudge himself towards different challenges.

“When I turned 60, on the one hand, I felt quite comfortable with where I was at in my life, what I’d achieved and what I’d not achieved and what I was going to do. You look at some of the things that you’ve achieved and you kind of realise: ‘God, I was never really in the moment for that’. You get a job and you’re doing it, and you’re doing your best — but you’re thinking: ‘Right, what’s next? What’s that going to lead to?’ and you don’t really enjoy the moment.”

Turning 60, he says, made him focus on projects that were interesting, fun and shooting in special locations.

Turning 60 made John Hannah focus on ‘fun’. Picture: Nicky J Sims/Getty Images

“Some people might say that I’ve had quite a mainstream kind of career in terms of television, in terms of The Mummy films. I’ve had various cool and interesting things along the way, but I certainly made a point that I was going to try and simply accept the cool and interesting things in future.”

The film certainly brought new challenges — because it is told through his character’s eyes and perspective, he was rigged with cameras during the filming process and went to a stunt boot camp to prepare for the film’s visceral action scenes.

“I decided to take it all on, so you commit 100%. I’ve always felt that filming is like a theatrical rehearsal,” he adds. “You try different things, you give them different materials, different takes, and then they make the film and they edit. That way, I don’t think you can ever be wrong when you’re filming —you can just be more right. I learned that way back in the day, and I’ve stuck with that.”

He says he has always taken a relaxed approach to filming, joking that when he first worked with director Stephen Sommers in The Mummy, and sought guidance, he recalls the filmmaker saying to him: “Hang around in the back, and if you do anything funny, I’ll give you a close up.”

Having come to prominence in Sliding Doors and Four Weddings and a Funeral, the East Kilbride man went on to star in dozens of projects across stage, cinema and TV. More recent projects have included Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, while this year he played a former detective drawn back into the job in Benidorm is Murder. He’s currently starring opposite Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson in the well-received Scottish-set comedy The Incomer and is set to join John Bradley in Vows. It tells of a bride and groom who discover their dream wedding is actually a ritual sacrifice.

Hannah is clearly approaching his sixties with an open-minded approach to what lies ahead on the career front. Could he take after our own Liam Neeson or Keanu Reeves and pivot to action-movie ninja? He’s not sure that’ll happen, he laughs. Having watched the film the night before, he could see how it impacted on him.

“I’m kind of all in 100% on everything I do. So having that pain and physicality and that journey was pretty much echoing the character,” he says. “It wasn’t exactly (filmed) in order but the sequences were almost in order,” he says of the movie’s action sequences.

“By the end of the sequences, when we’re in the sauna or when we’re on the plane, I could see how tired I was looking. I thought: ‘Well, that’s okay, he’s dying anyway.’ I was method acting in my exhaustion!”