John Lynch (Wikipedia)
John Lunch is an Irish actor and novelist. He won the AFI (AACTA) Award for Best Actor for the 1995 film Angel Baby. His other film appearances include Cal (1984), The Secret Garden (1993), In the Name of the Father (1993) and Sliding Doors (1998). He has also written two novels, Torn Water (2005) and Falling Out of Heaven (2010).
Lynch was born in Corrinshego, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. He attended St Colman’s College, Newry. He began acting in Irish language-medium plays at school during the early years of the conflict in Northern Ireland. He is the eldest of five children of an Irish father and an Italian mother from Trivento (Campobasso). His younger sister Susan and his nephew Thomas Finnegan are also actors.
Lynch has appeared in numerous films related to Northern Ireland’s problems such as Cal (1984) with Helen Mirren, In the Name of the Father (1993) with Daniel Day-Lewis, The Railway Station Man (1992) with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, Nothing Personal and Some Mother’s Son (1996), also with Mirren, as well as the Irish-themed film Evelyn (2002).
He starred as a supporting actor in Derek Jarman’s Edward II (1991), as Lord Craven in Agnieska Holland‘s film of The Secret Garden(1993), as Tadhg in The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), and as Gerry in Sliding Doors (1998).
Lynch played the part of football legend George Best in the 2000 film Best. He played the lead in the Australian feature Angel Baby, winning the Australian Film Institute award for best leading actor and the Australian Film Critics award for best actor of 1995. He was nominated for a Satellite Film Award for the film Moll Flanders in 1996. He worked with acclaimed Belgian director Marion Hansel on her adaptation of Booker-nominated author Damon Galgut’s novel, The Quarry (also known as La Faille; 1998), which won Best Film at the Montreal Film Festival. He won Best Actor for the lead role in Best at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival in 2000. He wrote and co-produced the film.
He was nominated for a BAFTA for Cal, as well as for an Irish Film and Television Award for his role in The Baby War. He starred in Five Day Shelter as Stephen, which won a European Film Award and was in competition at the Rome Film Festival. He played the lead in Craig Vivieros’ first feature film, the prison drama Ghosted. He played the role of Wollfstan in Black Death, and appeared in the 2012 film version of Michael Morpurgo‘s novel, Private Peaceful.
Lynch is also a novelist. His first novel, Torn Water, was published in November 2005 by the Fourth Estate, a literary imprint of Harper and Collins, and his second, Falling Out of Heaven, was published on 13 May 2010 by the same publisher.