Chris O'Dowd

Chris O'Dowd is an Irish actor and comedian born on 9 October 1979 in Boyle, County Roscommon, where he was raised as the youngest of five siblings. His father, Seán, works as a sign designer, and his mother, Denise, is a counsellor and psychotherapist. O'Dowd studied politics and sociology at University College Dublin, where he contributed to The University Observer and participated in both the UCD Drama Society and the Literary and Historical Society. He later attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, which he left before completing his degree after eighteen months. Before pursuing acting, he represented Roscommon in Gaelic football at under-16, minor, and under-21 levels, including an appearance as goalkeeper in the 1997 Connacht Minor Football Championship final against Mayo, a match broadcast by RTÉ Sport on The Sunday Game.

O'Dowd gained widespread recognition through his role as Roy Trenneman in the Channel 4 comedy series The IT Crowd, which ran for four seasons between 2006 and 2010. He also appeared in BBC Two's Roman's Empire, Red Cap, and the documentary-drama The Year London Blew Up, as well as the RTÉ One drama The Clinic and the Irish drama Showbands. He created and starred in the Sky 1 series Moone Boy, a semi-autobiographical comedy filmed in his hometown of Boyle that aired from 2012 to 2015 and earned him Irish Film and Television Award nominations for acting, writing, and directing. He has since appeared as Miles Daly in the Epix comedy series Get Shorty, a role he held across three seasons from 2017 to 2019, for which he received a nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role at the 2018 IFTA Film and Drama Awards. His performance in the British television series State of the Union earned him a Primetime Emmy Award. He also held a recurring role on the comedy-drama series Girls.

His film work includes Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009), Gulliver's Travels (2010), Bridesmaids (2011), Friends with Kids (2011), and The Sapphires (2012), for which he won an AACTA Award playing Dave in Wayne Blair's Australian musical. Additional film credits include Cuban Fury (2014), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), and Slumberland (2022). His earlier screen work includes a Scottish BAFTA-winning performance as stand-up comedian Tommy O'Dwyer in the 2005 film Festival. In 2020, he was ranked 39th on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.

O'Dowd made his Broadway debut in the 2014 revival of Of Mice and Men, directed by Anna D. Shapiro and co-starring James Franco and Leighton Meester. The production ran from April to July 2014, and his performance earned him nominations for both the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Best Actor in a Play, as well as a Theatre World Award. O'Dowd also co-wrote the Moone Boy book series with Nick V. Murphy, which includes The Blunder Years (2015), The Fish Detective (2015), The Notion Potion (2017), and the activity book The Marvellous Activity Manual (2017). He married Scottish writer, director, and television presenter Dawn Porter in 2012, and the couple have two sons together. The family divides their time between Bermondsey in London and Margate in Kent.