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Irish Actors

Collection of Classic Irish Actors

Risteard Cooper
Ristard Cooper

Risteard Cooper (Wikipedia)

Risteard Cooper is an Irish actor, comedian, singer and writer and is one third of comedy trio Après Match.

Cooper graduated from the acting program at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College. He lived in New York for several years where he worked at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Irish Rep and Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company (founded by, amongst others, John Malkovich) playing Mickey in the American premiere of Jez Butterworth’s Olivier award-winning play, Mojo directed by Ian Rickson.

He has played lead roles in the major theatres in Ireland including Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme at the Abbey TheatreAuntie and Me at the Gaiety TheatreI Keano at the Olympia Theatre, and in numerous productions at the Gate Theatre such as ArcadiaAn Ideal HusbandSee You Next TuesdayEccentricities of a NightingaleBetrayal (Pinter Festival) and The Deep Blue Sea.

In 2009, he played the role of Dmitri in Brian Friel‘s play The Yalta Game, directed by Patrick Mason for the Gate Theatre at the 2009 Sydney and Edinburgh International Festivals.

He played the leading role of Michael in the RTÉ/Element Pictures film Bitter Sweet for which he received a Best Actor nomination at the 2009 Monte Carlo Television and Film Awards.

He starred as Setanta de Paor in An Crisis, an Irish language satirical comedy series for TG4 for which he was also nominated at the 2010 Monte Carlo Awards, this time in the Best Comedy Actor category.

In 2011, he wrote and starred in a series of parodies on YouTube sponsored by sports betting agency Betdaq.

Later that year he played Henry Higgins in the Abbey Theatre’s first ever production of Shaw’s Pygmalion going on in 2012 to star as Joxer Daly with Ciarán Hinds (Boyle) and Sinéad Cusack (Juno) in O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock at the Abbey Theatre, before transferring to the National Theatre of Great Britain.

In 2013 he played Finbar in a production of Conor McPherson’s The Weir at The Donmar Warehouse, which transferred to the West End in 2014. It also starred Brian Cox, Dervla Kirwin, Ardal O’Hanlon and Peter McDonald and was directed by Josie Rourke.

In September 2014 he appeared as Sir Henry Coverly in the ITV drama The Suspicions of Mr Whicher “The Ties That Bind”, while in 2015 he portrayed Dermot Nally in RTÉ’s “Charlie” and most recently, the serial-killer Laurie Gaskell in the critically acclaimed eight-part comedy-drama “No Offence” for Channel 4.

Cooper also writes for the newspaper, The Irish Times.

Pauline Flanagan
Pauline Flanagan

Pauline Flanagan (Wikipedia)

Pauline Flanagan was a County Sligo-born Irish actress who had a long career on stageAmerican television audiences best knew her as Maeve Ryan’s sister, Annie Colleary, on the soap opera Ryan’s Hope in 1979 and again in 1981. She later returned to the show as Sister Mary Joel.

She appeared in many Broadway plays, starting in 1957 with Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. he starred in the 1976 Broadway revival of The Innocents. She appeared on Broadway in Philadelphia, Here I Come! in 1994.

She appeared Off-Broadway, several times with the Irish Repertory Theatre, including Juno and the Paycock (1995). She appeared in the Harold Prince play Grandchild of Kings at the Irish Repertory Theatre in February 1992, receiving the 1992 Outer Critics Circle Awardnomination for Best Actress. Other Off-Broadway work included Yeats: A Celebration.

She appeared in the play Summer, by Hugh Leonard at the Hudson Guild Theater, directed by Brian Murray. (Summer premiered at the Olney Theatre, Maryland, in August 1974.)

A resident of Glen Rock, New Jersey, she died at The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey one day before her 78th birthday of heart failure following a battle with lung cancer. She was survived by her husband, George Vogel (whom she married in 1958), a sister, Maura McNally, and her daughters Melissa Brown and Jane Holtzen.

In 1997 she won the Barclays Theatre Awards for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role in Jennifer Johnston‘s Desert Lullaby, at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast. (The Barclays Theatre Awards are for outstanding regional theatre (including opera and dance) in the UK.)

She was nominated for the 1982 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for Medea in which she performed on Broadway in 1982. In 2001 she won an Olivier Award, Best Supporting Actress, for her performance in Frank McGuinness‘ Dolly West’s Kitchen at the Old Vic.

Dictionary of Irish biography:

Flanagan, Pauline (1925–2003), actress, was born 29 June 1925 in Sligo town, youngest child of Patrick J. Flanagan and his wife Elizabeth (née McLynn). Her paternal family, originally from Co. Fermanagh, were driven out by anti‐catholic pogroms and resettled in Sligo, where her parents managed a retail business. The family’s politics were strongly nationalist and republican; her father fought in the war of independence, spending much time on the run or in jail. Both her parents served as mayors of Sligo, her father as an independent republican in 1939, her mother (the first woman to hold the office) in 1945; Pauline’s uncle Thomas Flanagan served two consecutive terms as mayor (1904–5).

Educated in Sligo at the Ursuline convent school, Flanagan was drawn to acting while a schoolgirl, but faced some family objection to pursuing the interest as a career. After performing in amateur dramatics, she landed her first professional roles with the Garryowen Players during the 1949 summer season in Bundoran, Co. Donegal. In the early 1950s she spent three years in the renowned fit-up company of Anew McMaster (qv), in later life recalling fondly the constant travelling, cheap digs, hard work, invaluable experience, and wonderful fun. She played a great range of roles – support and lead, comic and tragic – in Shakespeare, ancient Greek drama, contemporary potboilers, and melodrama. Colleagues in the company included T. P. McKenna (qv), Patrick Magee (qv), Milo O’Shea (qv), and Harold Pinter.

While visiting a sister in New York in the mid 1950s, Flanagan took a job as understudy in a production of ‘The living room’ by Graham Greene. Thus began her long and distinguished career on the New York stage and elsewhere in America, including numerous appearances on and off Broadway. Her Broadway debut came in the first Main Stem production of Dylan Thomas’s play for voices ‘Under Milk Wood’ (1957); the cast included Tom Clancy (qv). Other early New York credits included ‘Ulysses in Nighttown’ (1958), an adaptation from the text of James Joyce (qv), directed by Burgess Meredith; Flanagan played both Molly Bloom and Mrs Dedalus among other characters, opposite Zero Mostel as Leopold Bloom. She appeared in two other stage adaptations with Irish settings: ‘God and Kate Murphy’ (1959), directed by Meredith and starring Larry Hagman; and ‘Drums under the window’ (1960), from the autobiographical work by Sean O’Casey(qv).

In the early 1970s Flanagan performed several major Broadway roles with the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center: the Female Chorus Leader in ‘Antigone’ (1971); Ann Putnam in a revival of Arthur Miller’s ‘The crucible’ (1972); and Bessie Burgess in O’Casey’s ‘The plough and the stars’ (1973), in a cast that included Jack MacGowran (qv) as Fluther Good, and Christopher Walken as Jack Clitheroe. She played Myra White in ‘Summer’ (1974) by Hugh Leonard (1926–2009), both in the original production at the Olney Theater in Maryland, and at the Olympia in the Dublin theatre festival. Pinter directed her on Broadway as Mrs Grose in ‘The innocents’ (1976), an adaptation of Henry James’s ‘The turn of the screw’, starring Claire Bloom and a young Sarah Jessica Parker.

Flanagan received a Drama Desk nomination for outstanding featured actress in a play for her Broadway performance as the First Woman of Corinth in an acclaimed production of ‘Medea’ (1982), supporting the Tony‐winning Zoe Caldwell in the title role. She appeared in the original Broadway production of ‘Steaming’ (1983), and with Keith Baxter and Milo O’Shea in the long‐running ‘Corpse!’ (1986). In her last Broadway role, she played Madge in a revival of ‘Philadelphia, here I come!’ (1994) by Brian Friel. Her many roles with the off‐Broadway Irish Repertory Theatre included Sean O’Casey’s mother in ‘Grandchild of kings’ (1992), adapted and directed by the noted impresario Hal Prince from O’Casey’s early autobiographies, for which she was nominated for best actress by the Outer Critics Circle. Other credits with the troupe included O’Casey’s ‘Juno and the paycock’ (1995) (as Mrs Boyle), and Leonard’s ‘A life’ (2001).

From the early 1990s Flanagan returned to the Irish stage with outstanding performances in some of the most important Irish plays and productions of the period. She was Mrs Grigson in Shivaun O’Casey’s production of her father Sean’s ‘The shadow of a gunman’, in both Dublin and off‐Broadway in New York (1991). In ‘The desert lullaby’ by Jennifer Johnston at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre (1996), Flanagan played Nellie, the housekeeper, friend, and confidante of the mistress of an old Wicklow country house (played by Stella McCusker); the performance, ‘all mothering minder and loving tender, yet never without due reserve’ (David Nowlan, Ir. Times, 1 Nov. 1996), won her the TMA Barclays Award for best supporting actress in UK regional theatre. She appeared as Mother in ‘Tarry Flynn’, adapted and directed by Conall Morrison from the novel by Patrick Kavanagh (qv), both in the Abbey Theatre premiere (1997), and in the warmly received London run at the Royal National Theatre (1998).

Flanagan appeared in two first productions by the Abbey company of plays by Marina Carr. In ‘Portia Coughlan’ (1996) she played Blaize Scully, the vicious‐tongued paraplegic grandmother of the eponymous character (played by Derbhle Crotty), directed by Garry Hynes. In another pungent work of earthy midlands gothic, she was (in Nowlan’s words (Ir. Times, 8 Oct. 1998)) ‘strikingly and effectively unpleasant’ as the ‘venomously selfish’ Mrs Kilbride in Carr’s ‘By the Bog of Cats’ (1998), opposite Olwen Fouéré; directed by Patrick Mason, she was nominated for best supporting actress in the Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards. She appeared as Nell in ‘Endgame’ (1999) by Samuel Beckett (qv), with Alan Stanford, Barry McGovern, and Bill Golding, which played Dublin’s Gate Theatre, the Melbourne Festival, and the Barbican Centre in London. Directed by Mason at the Abbey, Flanagan was superb as Rima West, the hard drinking, raunchy mouthed, but compassionate widowed matriarch in ‘Dolly West’s kitchen’ (1999) by Frank McGuinness, set along the Donegal–Derry border during the second world war. Receiving a Beckett Award as best actress in the 1999 Dublin theatre festival, she remarked: ‘At my age I should be saying my prayers and getting ready for the grave, but here I am winning awards’ (Ir. Times, 20 Oct. 1999). For the production’s run at the Old Vic (2000), she won an Olivier Award as best supporting actress on the London stage, which she described as the pinnacle of her acting career.

Primarily a stage actress, Flanagan did relatively little work in television or film. Early in her American career she performed in two worthy productions of television theatre: in ‘Juno and the paycock’ (1960) in a cast that included Walter Matthau and Liam Clancy; and in ‘Little moon of Alban’ (1964) by James Costigan, supporting Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer. She made several appearances on US television in the 1980s, and impressively supported John Hurt and Brenda Blethyn in the feature film Night train (1998), set in contemporary suburban Dublin, directed by John Lynch.

Flanagan’s last performances were among the greatest of her career. In a revival of Tom Murphy’s ‘Bailegangaire’ she played the physically and mentally demanding role of Mommo, a confused, bedridden old woman (on stage throughout the entire play), who night after night tells the same disjointed story without ever arriving at the conclusion: how a laughing competition resulted in the renaming of the eponymous ‘town without laughter’. Flanagan compared the role to a nightly ascent of Everest, the script being so tight that the performance must not only be word‐perfect and letter‐perfect, but every punctuation point must be perfectly placed. Directed by the playwright as part of the Abbey’s five‐play Murphy retrospective in the 2001 Dublin theatre festival, supported by Jane Brennan and Derbhle Crotty as Mommo’s two granddaughters, Flanagan was hailed for liberating the play from the legend of Siobhán McKenna (qv), who had originated the role in the Druid production of 1986. Fintan O’Toole praised Flanagan’s ‘exquisitely detailed’ performance, ‘not the baroque opera of McKenna, but a haunting chamber piece’ (Ir. Times, 5 Oct. 2001). As the role had been the swansong of McKenna’s career, so it was of Flanagan’s; the production’s reprisal at the Peacock in 2002 was her last appearance on an Irish stage. Though ill with lung cancer, she repeated the role with the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York, where Bruce Weber described her ‘captivating performance’ as ‘by turns comic, pathetic, and chilling in depicting the madness of old age’ (NY Times, 15 Oct. 2002).

Among the best Irish actors of her generation, Flanagan was strikingly featured rather than beautiful; Leonard remembered her ‘Nefertiti profile’ (Sunday Independent, 6 July 2003). Some thirty years old when she first hit the New York stage, she never played ingénue roles, and few leading ones, but excelled as strong supporting characters, with distinctive, often difficult or disturbed personalities, going from strength to strength in such parts as she aged. Michael Colgan of the Gate Theatre compared her legacy to the Irish theatre to that of Donal McCann (qv) and Ray McAnally (qv), remarking: ‘It takes such a long time in theatre to nurture that level of timing and talent’ (Ir. Times, 1 July 2003). Lauded by Murphy as ‘a superb woman, a lion-hearted woman’ (ibid.), she was eulogised for her kindness, generosity, and tolerance. She married (1958) George Vogel, an actor whom she met when he was writing a thesis on O’Casey; they had two daughters, and resided in New Jersey. She died of heart failure 29 June 2003 in New York

Aisling O’Sullivan
Aisling O’Sullivan

Aisling O’Sullivan (Wikipedia)

Aisling O’Sullivan was born in 1968 in Tralee, Co Kerry.

O’Sullivan attended the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin and joined the Abbey Theatre in 1991.

She garnered major acclaim for her performance as Widow Quin in Druid Theatre Company‘s 2004 production of The Playboy of the Western World, which toured throughout Ireland including her native Kerry, and also starred Cillian Murphy and Anne-Marie Duff

In 2011 and 2012, she toured Ireland again with Druid, playing the titular character in Big Maggie by John B. Keane and was consequently nominated for Best Actress in the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards.

At the National Theatre she played in LiolàMutabilitie, and The Cripple of Inishmaan.

She played the role of Aileen Beck in the “Best Boys” episode of the 1995 TV series Cracker.

O’Sullivan had a small part in Michael Collins (1996).

She appeared in another Neil Jordan film, The Butcher Boy (1997) as Francie’s mentally unstable mother.

In a 1998 PBS adaptation of Henry James novel The American, she played the part of Claire De Cintré, opposite Matthew Modine and Diana Rigg.

She played the grieving mother who commits suicide in Six Shooter, playwright Martin McDonagh‘s Oscar-winning short film.[3]

She is familiar to Irish television audiences as Dr. Cathy Costello from Series 1 to Series 5 in the drama series The Clinic, a role for which she has won an Irish Film and Television Awards best actress award in 2008.

She had a leading role in the Channel 4 thriller Shockers (1999). She starred in Seasons 2 through 5 in Raw, an RTÉ drama portraying the lives of a restaurant staff, playing manager Fiona Kelly.


Gary Whelan
Gary Whelan

Gary Whelan (born 1953 in Dublin) is an Irish actor who sporadically appeared as detective Terry Rich in EastEnders from the shows interception in February 1985 to May 1987

Gary Whelan

Dublin-born, he moved with his family to London at the age of ten. He is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and was also a successful property developer during the 1980s. He is the owner of the public house, the Lion and the Lobster, in Brighton and known for roles in television programmes Michael Collins, Dracula Untold and Beyond the Sea.

Valene Kane
Valence Kane

Valene Kane (Wikipedia)

Valene Kane is best known for playing Rose Stagg, the ex-girlfriend of serial killer Paul Spector, in The Fall on BBC Two and for her role as Lyra Erso in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  She is also known for her role in the BBC drama Thirteen. She starred as DS Lisa Merchant, described as “superb” by The Radio Times: “The former star of The Fall‘s scenes […] are among the show’s most intriguing, simmering with sexual tension and professional frustration.”

Kane won the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Supporting Performer for her role in The Stroma Sessions and her film Profile (in which she played a struggling undercover journalist who connects with a Jihadi through Facebook) won the Panorama Audience Award at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.

She is the daughter of Val Kane “successful Down county Gaelic footballer and coach”and was raised in Newry, County Down. From the age of 15, she was part of the National Youth Theatre, most notably starring in their production of 20 Cigarettes. She left Northern Ireland for London at 18 and trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Kane was cast in The Fading Light by the director Ivan Kavanagh after he spotted her in a short film, July, that was posted on YouTube.  She was chosen partly for her successful experience with improvisation in the short film. 2013 saw her play Rose Stagg in the BBC‘s TV series The Fall, and Dara in the comic Irish thriller Jump. Also in 2013, Kane played the title role in Strindberg‘s Miss Julie at the newly founded Reading Rep.

Other film work Still Early, a short film which premiered at the Galway Film Festival. Kane’s work for the BBC in 2016 includes taking the lead in BBC3 drama Thirteen, the third series of The Fall, and an episode of Murder. Also that year, she played Lyra Erso, the protagonist’s mother, in the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Kane has been seen on stage as Nance, in the Finborough Theatre‘s production of Autumn Fire, The Love in Punchdrunk‘s production The Black Diamond, which sold out “in mere minutes” and Lady Lydia Languish in The Rivals. She also played Girleen in Martin McDonagh‘s The Lonesome West in which one reviewer said “Kane gives Girleen a schoolgirl reality, her confident swagger and challenge covering the only genuine feelings for anyone else that the play possesses”.

Kane’s radio drama work for the BBC includes The Demon Brother and Stroma Sessions for which she won Best Supporting Performer.

In 2018 Valene Kane played journalist Amy Whittaker who investigates the recruitment of young European women by the ISIS in the 2018 thriller film Profile by Timur Bekmambetov. The film takes place entirely on computer screens. It premiered at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Panorama Audience Award.

2019 saw Kane in Anne Sewitsky‘s Sonja: The White Swan which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and in BBC TV Movie Counselin which she played the “an alpha female barrister [who] complicates her professional and personal life when she takes on a young client” 

Kane could also be heard on the Monobox Speech Share podcast reading from Marina Carr‘s “Portia Coughlan” 

Lorraine Pilkington
Lorraine Pilkington

Lorraine Pilkington (Wikipedia)

Lorraine Pilkington was born 18 April 1974 & is an Irish actress from Dublin, who is best known for her role as Katrina Finlay from Monarch of the Glen

Born in Dublin, Pilkington grew up in the affluent suburban village of Malahide, and attended Manor House SchoolRaheny.

Trained at the Gaiety School of Acting, Pilkington began her career at the age of 15 when she appeared in The Miracle directed by Neil Jordan. She appeared onstage in the plays The Plough and the Stars and The Iceman Cometh

At age 18 she moved to London where she was given a part in a Miramax film which eventually fell through. After returning to Dublin, Pilkington appeared in films including Human Traffic and My Kingdom, a retelling of King Lear

In 2000, she was cast as Katrina Finlay, a schoolteacher in a Scottish village in the BBC television series Monarch of the Glen. After leaving the show at the beginning of the third season, she appeared in various other television productions such as Rough Diamond and Outnumbered

She married Simon Massey, the director of Monarch of the Glen, in 2001. They have three sons, Milo, Luca and Inigo.

In 2008, she appeared in a short film by Luke Massey Within the Woods, with James Chalmers.

In 2016 she voiced the lead role in a Paramount animation, Capture the Flag.


Amybeth McNulty
Amybeth McNulty

Amybeth McNulty (Wikipedia)

Amybeth McNulty is an Irish-Canadianactress, born in Donegal in 2001. She is known for her starring role as Anne Shirley in the CBC/Netflix drama series Anne with an E (2017–present), based on the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

McNulty was born to an Irish father and a Canadian mother. She is from LetterkennyCo. Donegal. McNulty is a natural blonde, contrary to the widespread public belief that she is a redhead. She dyed her hair red for her role in Anne with an E

McNulty has previously appeared in the RTÉ One series Clean Break and Agatha Raisin.[3] Since 2017, she has starred as Anne Shirley in the CBC/Netflix drama series Anne with an E, which is based on the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.


Patrick Colbert
Patrick Colbert


Patrick Colbert was born on November 20, 1897 in Clonmel, County Tipperary, Ireland. He was an actor, known for Shipmates o’ Mine (1936), The Mikado.   He died in 1971.

Stephen Mangan
Stephen Mangan

Stephen Mangan (Wikipedia)

Stephen Mangan was born in 1968. He has played Guy Secretan in Green Wing, Dan Moody in I’m Alan Partridge, Sean Lincoln in Episodes and Postman Pat in Postman Pat: The Movie.

As a stage actor, he was Tony-nominated for his portrayal of Norman in The Norman Conquests on Broadway. He also starred as Bertie Wooster in Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense at the Duke of York’s Theatre, which won the 2014 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy.

Mangan was born in Ponders EndLondon, to Irish parents. He has two sisters, Anita and Lisa.

Mangan was educated at two independent schools for boys: at Lochinver House School, in Potters BarHertfordshire, and Haileybury and Imperial Service College (now co-educational), a boarding school in the village of Hertford Heath (also in Hertfordshire). He was in a school prog rock band called Aragon, who recorded an album called The Wizard’s Dream.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Law at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Mangan took a year out to care for his mother, Mary, who died of colon cancer at age 45. Weeks after her death, he auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to study there for three years. His father, James, died of a brain tumor at age 63.

After graduating from RADA in 1994, Mangan did not pursue lead roles on-screen, preferring to take what he saw as the less limited opportunities on the stage. Between 1994 and 2000, he performed in plays throughout the UK and the West End before joining the theatre company Cheek by Jowl for an international tour of Much Ado About Nothing, earning him a nomination for a National Theatre Ian Charleson Award. He worked again for director Declan Donnellan at the Royal Shakespeare Company in School for Scandal, and at the Savoy Theatre in Hay Fever.

In 2008 he played the title role in The Norman Conquests, directed by Matthew Warchus, at The Old Vic and then at the Circle in the Square on Broadway.  The production was a huge critical success earning several Tony Award nominations, including one for Mangan himself and won the Tony Award for Best Revival.

In 2012 he appeared at the Royal Court in a Joe Penhall play, Birthday, directed by Roger Michell, playing a pregnant man.

Mangan starred as Bertie Wooster in Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense at the Duke of York’s Theatre alongside Matthew Macfadyen as Jeeves from October 2013 until they were replaced by Mark Heap and Robert Webb in April 2014. The production won the 2014 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy.

Mangan’s breakthrough television performance was as Adrian Mole in the six-part BBC TV show series Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years in 2001. That same year he appeared in Sword of Honour on Channel 4, alongside Daniel Craig.

In 2002, he appeared as Dan Moody in the I’m Alan Partridge episode “Bravealan”. A scene where Alan repeatedly shouts “Dan!” at Dan from a distance in a car park, while Dan pretends not to notice him, was named the second best moment from the series by Metro, and in 2014 Mangan said that he has “Dan!” shouted at him by passers-by almost every day.

Mangan played Guy Secretan in the BAFTA-winning British sitcom Green Wing. In Channel 4’s The World’s Greatest Comedy Characters, Guy was voted 34th. He starred as Keith in Never Better, a British television sitcom on BBC Two. He plays a recovering alcoholic Keith Merchant and Kate Ashfield is his long-suffering wife Anita. The series was written by Fintan Ryan for World Productions.

In 2009, Free Agents, a romantic black comedy starred Mangan, Sharon Horgan and Anthony Head. Originally a pilot for Channel 4 in November 2007, the series began on 13 February 2009.  It spawned a short lived US remake, which was cancelled after just four episodes aired, although four more were later released on Hulu.

He played the title role in Dirk Gently, a British comedy detective drama TV series based on characters from the Dirk Gently novels by Douglas Adams. The series was created by Howard Overman and co-starred Darren Boyd as his sidekick Richard MacDuff. Recurring actors included Helen Baxendale as MacDuff’s girlfriend Susan Harmison, Jason Watkins as Dirk’s nemesis DI Gilks and Lisa Jackson as Dirk’s receptionist Janice Pearce. Unlike most detective series Dirk Gently featured broadly comic touches and even some science fiction themes such as time travel and artificial intelligence. He has said that he was “bitterly upset” at the BBC’s axing of the series after four episodes due to a freeze on the licence fee.

He played the title role in “The Hunt for Tony Blair“, a one-off episode of The Comic Strip Presents…, a British television comedy, which was first shown on Channel 4 on 14 October 2011. The 60 minute film was written by Peter Richardson and Pete Richens and presented in the style of a 1950s film noir. It stars Mangan as the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is wanted for murder and on the run as a fugitive. The film received its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in August 2011. It first aired on Channel 4 on 14 October 2011; it received a mostly positive reaction from reviewers, and was nominated for a BAFTA award (Best Comedy Programme 2012) and the British Comedy Awards (Best Comedy Drama 2011).

He appeared in Episodes, a British/American television comedy series created by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik and produced by Hat Trick Productions. It premiered on Showtime in the United States on 9 January 2011 at 9:30 pm  and on BBC Two in the UK on 10 January 2011.

The show is about a British husband-and-wife comedy writing team who travel to Hollywood to remake their successful British TV series, with disastrous results. On 11 December 2013, it was announced that Showtime had renewed Episodes for a fourth season. Episodeshas received positive reviews by critics, with many singling out Mangan, Tamsin Greig, and Matt LeBlanc‘s performances.

In 2018 Stephen Mangan played the lead role in a comedy British TV Series Bliss that was aired on Sky One.

Mangan’s first film part was as Doctor Crane in Billy Elliot. He played French cabaret singer Pierre Dupont in the cult film Chunky Monkeyalongside David Threlfall and Alison Steadman. He appeared in the Miramax film Birthday Girl, starring Nicole Kidman and Vincent Cassel.

He appeared opposite Keira Knightley in the 2002 short New Year’s Eve, and played the leading role in SuperTex (2003), a Dutch film, filmed in English and directed by Jan Schütte. He played a comedian in Festival is a 2005 British black comedy about a number of people at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe directed by Annie Griffin. The general shots of the festival were filmed during the 2004 event. Mangan was nominated for a Scottish BAFTA for his performance.

Confetti, a 2006 British mockumentary romantic comedy film, was released on 5 May 2006. It was conceived and directed by Debbie Isittand stars many British comedians, including Jessica StevensonJimmy CarrMartin FreemanMark HeapJulia DavisRobert Webb, and Olivia Colman. It follows a bridal magazine competition for the most original wedding, the ultimate prize being a house, and the three couples who are chosen to compete. Mangan plays one of the grooms, a professional tennis player.

He starred in Beyond the Pole, a 2010 British mockumentary adapted from the cult BBC radio series of the same name. It received its UK cinema release in 2010. It was directed and produced by David L. Williams.  The film was shot on floating sea ice off the coast of Greenland, and stars an acclaimed cast of actors and comedians including Mangan, Rhys ThomasMark BentonAlexander Skarsgardand Helen BaxendaleVariety magazine described the film as a cross between The Office and Touching the Void.

In 2013 Mangan played Alastair Caldwell in Rush, a British-German biographical sports drama film centered on the rivalry between race car drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda during the 1976 Formula One motor-racing season. It was written by Peter Morgan, directed by Ron Howard and stars Chris Hemsworth as Hunt and Daniel Brühl as Lauda. The film premiered in London on 2 September 2013 and was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival[30][31] before its UK and US theatrical releases on, respectively, 13 and 20 September 2013.

In 2014, Mangan voiced the title role in Postman Pat: The Movie, a British 3D computer-animated comedy film featuring Postman Pat, star of a long-running BBC children’s series. It was originally due to be released on 24 May 2013,[33] but was pushed back to a year later. Pat’s singing voice was performed by Ronan Keating. Other voice actors in the film included Jim BroadbentRupert Grint, and David Tennant.

Mangan was host of the Evening Standard British Film Awards for four years (2009–2013). On 27 April 2014, he returned to host the British Academy Television Craft Awards in London for a third time. Mangan recorded the role of Cloten in Shakespeare‘s Cymbelinefor the Arkangel Shakespeare audiobook series, directed by Clive Brill.

Mangan is married to actress Louise Delamere. They have three sons.

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