Lewis is also widely regarded as a man who loves the community, regularly visiting local school to give insights and advice relating to his career.

[2][3] In 1979, Lewis starred in writer Freddy Anderson's Fringe First Award-winning play Krassivy, based on the life of Socialist school teacher John Maclean.

[2] Although he had pursued amateur theatrics, Lewis was 32 when he committed to acting, joining Robert Carlyle's newly formed Raindog Theatre,[4] where he performed in plays such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ecstasy and Wasted.

[3][6][7] Lewis joined director Kenneth Loach's unofficial stock company lending support to his two mentors in separate films: with Robert Carlyle, he co-starred in Carla's Song (1996), while he played a recovering alcoholic alongside Mullan in My Name Is Joe (1998).

[21] Lewis's portrayal of a grief-stricken father, coping with the 1984-85 miner's strike and raising a son who wants to become a ballet dancer earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

[23][24] Lewis finished the year with several short films including What Where, a 12-minute short with Sean McGinley based upon Samuel Beckett's play of the same name, director David Mackenzie's Marcie's Dowry, The Elevator alongside Ashley Walters, Long Haul alongside Simone Lahbib, Clean with actor Stephen McCole, and director David McKay's Caesar.

[26] Next was Danish director Soren Kragh-Jacobsen's film Skagerrak, a romantic drama set in Scotland, which saw Lewis in a supporting role as a local Glaswegian.

[35] The last, a film noir drama from director and writer May Miles Thomas titled Solid Air, which is about the relationship between a sickly father (Maurice Roeves) and his compulsive gambler son (Brian McCardie).

[36] Working with director Kenneth Loach again, Lewis starred in the 2004 love story Ae Fond Kiss..., which takes its name from a Robert Burns poem.

[46] As the skipper of a bankrupt Scottish fishing trawler in True North, Lewis and actor Martin Compston tackle the subject of migrant smuggling and the effects it has on those making the journey.

[47] At the end of 2005, Lewis starred as Hrothgar in 20th Century Fox's live action adaptation of Christopher Paolini's hit fantasy trilogy Eragon.

[50][51] Psychological thriller Dorothy Mills, directed by Agnes Merlet, featured Lewis as the brainwashing pastor of a small community on a bleak Irish island.

[65] Thirteen years after first working with May Thomas Miles in One Life Stand, Lewis reunited with the filmmaker in 2013 for the film version of her BAFTA winning interactive website The Devil's Plantation.

[68] He then appeared in Scottish romantic comedy Not Another Happy Ending as Benny Lockhart opposite Karen Gillan and fellow Outlander alumni Stanley Weber.

[89][90] In 2002, Lewis starred in CBC's award-winning TV film The Many Trials of One Jane Doe, which is based on a true story of a Toronto woman who challenged the police and their investigation after being raped, through a lengthy court battle.

[93][94] That same year he featured in scriptwriter Andrew Davies's made for TV historical drama Warrior Queen, which detailed the birth of Great Britain.

[95] His next project, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot (2004), was a four part mini-series for the BBC on the lives of Mary Queen of Scots and her son James VI of Scotland/James I of England.

[97][98][99] The BBC and The Discovery Channel partnered in 2005 to produce a made-for-TV film, Supervolcano, that proposed a scenario where the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone National Park erupted.

[116] Finally, Lewis appeared in the BBC mini-series Young James Herriot, which focused on the All Creatures Great and Small author's time as a student at Glasgow Veterinary College, in the role of Professor Quinton Gunnel.

[118][119] In 2012 Lewis starred in the two-part television miniseries L'Olimpiade Nascosta, on Italy's Rai 1, which tells the story of symbolic Olympic Games held by the prisoners and their captors while in Polish Nazi concentration camps.

[124] He next appeared in episode six of Sky One's mini-series The Smoke, which chronicled the lives of a group of London firefighters, and the BAFTA winning TV film Glasgow Girls, which featured Lewis as a teacher supporting his pupils in their fight to save their classmate from deportation.

[128][2] Death in Paradise, BBC's lighthearted police drama set on an island in the Caribbean, featured Lewis in the guest starring role of Bill Williams early in 2015.

[2] Lewis ended 2016 by once again working with costar Douglas Henshall in ITV's three-part mini-series In Plain Sight, which was based on the true story of Lanarkshire Detective William Muncie's quest to bring serial rapist and murderer Peter Manuel to justice in the 1950s.

[133] During the first quarter of 2019, Lewis guest starred in series finale of BBC Scotland's hit comedy Still Game, which focused on two Glaswegians and their reactions to the world.