Aidan Gillen

Aidan Gillen, born Aidan Murphy on 24 April 1968 in the Drumcondra area of Dublin, is an Irish actor who adopted his mother's maiden name as a stage name after finding the name Aidan Murphy already registered with Equity. The youngest of six children born to Patricia and Denis Murphy, he was educated at St. Vincent's C.B.S. in the Glasnevin neighbourhood of Dublin. Gillen joined the National Youth Theatre at fourteen and Dublin Youth Theatre in his teens, making his earliest known stage appearance at sixteen as Nick Bottom in a Dublin Youth Theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Project Theatre in 1983. He obtained his Equity card upon leaving school and relocated to London in 1987.

His early London stage work included a role in Billy Roche's Wexford Trilogy at the Bush Theatre and a subsequent appearance in Juno and the Paycock at the Royal National Theatre. Gillen made his Broadway debut in 2003, playing Mick in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker alongside Patrick Stewart and Kyle MacLachlan, in a production directed by David Jones. The role earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play, both in 2004. His Broadway producers on The Caretaker subsequently led to his being cast in the HBO series The Wire, where he played Baltimore politician Tommy Carcetti from 2004 to 2008. Later stage credits include a 2005 London production of Frank McGuinness's Someone Who'll Watch Over Me at the New Ambassadors Theatre, and a 2008 appearance as Teach in the Dublin Gate Theatre's production of David Mamet's American Buffalo.

On television, Gillen first gained wide recognition playing Stuart Alan Jones in the Channel 4 series Queer as Folk in 1999 and 2000. His performance as Tommy Carcetti in The Wire brought him an Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor in a Lead Role in Television. He subsequently played crime boss John Boy in the Irish crime drama Love/Hate from 2010 to 2011, a role that earned him a second Irish Film and Television Award win. Beginning in 2011, Gillen portrayed Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish across seven seasons of the HBO series Game of Thrones, appearing until his character's death in the season seven finale. He shared a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination with the Game of Thrones ensemble for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. Additional television work includes the BBC thriller Mayday, the History Channel series Project Blue Book from 2019 to 2020, in which he played Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the RTÉ One crime drama Kin from 2021 to 2023, and the Paramount series Mayor of Kingstown from 2021 to 2024. He also appeared in the crime drama Peaky Blinders as Aberama Gold from 2017 to 2019.

Gillen's film career includes the role of Lord Nelson Rathbone in Shanghai Knights in 2003, a CIA operative in The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, Dr. Frank Harte in Calvary in 2014, Janson in both Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials and Maze Runner: The Death Cure, Robert in Sing Street in 2016, and Queen's manager John Reid in Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018. He also co-wrote and starred in Jamie Thraves's 2017 feature film Pickups, their third collaboration together. An earlier Thraves film, The Low Down, in which Gillen starred in 2000, was later cited by The Observer among its list of fifty lost movie classics.

Over the course of his career Gillen has received three Irish Film and Television Awards and has been nominated for a British Academy Television Award and a British Independent Film Award, in addition to his Tony Award and Drama Desk Award nominations. He resides in Dublin.