Catherine McCormack

Catherine Jane McCormack is an English actress born on 3 April 1972 in Epsom, Surrey. She is of part Irish descent through one of her grandfathers. McCormack lost her mother to lupus at the age of six, after which her father, a steelworker, raised her and her brother Stephen. She was brought up Roman Catholic and attended the Convent of Our Lady of Providence before going on to train at the Oxford School of Drama.

McCormack made her screen debut in the 1994 film Loaded, directed by Anna Campion. Her breakthrough came the following year with Braveheart (1995), in which she played Murron MacClannough in the multiple Academy Award-winning production. She subsequently took lead roles in The Land Girls (1998), alongside Anna Friel and Rachel Weisz, and in Dangerous Beauty (1998), directed by Marshall Herskovitz. Her other film credits include Dancing at Lughnasa (1998), Spy Game (2001), and 28 Weeks Later (2007).

Alongside her film work, McCormack has maintained an active stage career. Her theatre credits include National Theatre productions of All My Sons (2000) and Honour (2003). She was part of the original 2006 London cast of Patrick Barlow's The 39 Steps. In 2008, she performed the role of Nora in Peter Hall's production of A Doll's House at the Theatre Royal, Bath, and also played Isabel Archer in a stage adaptation of The Portrait of a Lady, both of which transferred to the Rose Theatre in Kingston later that year. In 2009, she appeared in the British tour of Headlong's adaptation of Six Characters in Search of an Author, and in 2012 she starred as Juana Inés de la Cruz in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Helen Edmundson's The Heresy of Love.

McCormack made her Broadway debut in 2018, appearing in The Ferryman.