About John…

John Ritchie was born in the Scottish Borders and raised in Edinburgh. He started acting and performing whilst at school; in fact his first appearance was, like so many other people, in his primary school nativity play. Those who saw his camel came away knowing they were in the presence of someone special. After he left school he continued to appear around Edinburgh in plays including Fathers and Sons (Brian Friel,  after Turgenev) and returned to personifying animals by playing a long-haired pig in a production of The Owl and the Pussycat. Owen Dudley-Edwards said in his review in The Scotsman newspaper that the pig was so real he could nearly smell him (not the worst review John’s had, to be fair).

During his training he appeared as Macbeth (Macbeth) and John Proctor (The Crucible) and toured Portugal as Prince Pedro in Jo Clifford’s Ines de Castro a production for which he also composed the score.

John has appeared in major TV series and shows including Outlander, Jonathan Creek and Monarch of the Glen. He spent four series playing the sinister, silent sidekick  Groundskeeper Fergus to Alan Cumming’s Laird in The Traitors for NBC/Peacock and has recently finished working on the reboot of Monarch of the Glen for Masterpiece PBS. He appears in Brian Cox’s directorial debut Glenrothan which won Best Feature Film at the UK National Film Awards in July 2026.

His voice has been heard in video games including GTA: Vice City and Fable: Legends and he has narrated audiobooks for RNIB Scotland amongst others as well as providing the voice for Clan Campbell’s European Campaigns in 2024 and 2025.

John also has a PhD from the University of Stirling (a real one, not one of the pretend ones universities give to famous folk they want to have lunch with) as well as a MSc, a MLitt and a BA. He has published across a number of academic journals and edited collections, as well as guest blogging for a few websites. You never know, he might add some more writing on here, keep checking back.

John is delighted to be represented by Niki Winterson and her team for physical, screen and stage work, and by Emily Dean at VoiceFox for games and other vocal work.

John lives with his wife and family and spends a lot of time travelling. He always makes sure has spare cutlery with him because he once had to eat yoghurt with a fork and that was just weird.

(He also knows that a lot of you want to see photos of the dog so there’s a small section of photos of the dog somewhere on the site.)

John in GTA: Vice City

He’s all of these guys too!