Ciarán Hinds

Ciarán Hinds (pronounced KEER-ən) is an Irish actor born on 9 February 1953 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Raised as a Catholic in north Belfast, he was the only son among five children born to his father Gerry, a doctor, and his mother Moya, a schoolteacher and amateur actress. As a youth he was an Irish dancer and attended Holy Family Primary School and St Malachy's College. He subsequently enrolled at the College of Business Studies and later as a law student at Queen's University Belfast before abandoning those studies to pursue acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he completed his training in 1975.

Hinds launched his professional career at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in a 1976 production of Cinderella, remaining a frequent performer there through the mid-1980s. During that same period he worked in Ireland with the Abbey Theatre, the Field Day Theatre Company, the Druid Theatre, the Lyric Players' Theatre, and the Project Arts Centre. In 1987, Peter Brook cast him in The Mahabharata, a six-hour theatre piece that toured the world and was also adapted into a film in 1989. In the early 1990s he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and in 1993 he stepped into the title role of the RSC's Richard III, directed by Sam Mendes, as a last-minute replacement for an injured Simon Russell Beale. He has also spent time as a performer with the Royal National Theatre.

Hinds made his Broadway debut in Patrick Marber's Tony Award-nominated play Closer, in which he played the role of Larry. His performance earned him the Theatre World Award for Best Debut in New York in 1999, as well as the Outer Critics Circle Award for Special Achievement for Best Ensemble Cast Performance. He returned to Broadway in The Crucible and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and also appeared in The Seafarer by Conor McPherson, which ran at the Booth Theatre from December 2007 through March 2008. His Broadway appearances span from 1999 to 2016.

Beyond Broadway, Hinds continued an active stage life. In 2001 he appeared in The Yalta Game by Brian Friel at Dublin's Gate Theatre, and in February 2009 he took the leading role of General Sergei Kotov in Burnt by the Sun at London's National Theatre. Later in 2009 he appeared in Conor McPherson's The Birds at Dublin's Gate Theatre. In September 2011 he returned to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin to star as Captain Jack Boyle in a revival of Seán O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock alongside Sinéad Cusack, a production that subsequently transferred to the National Theatre of Great Britain for a three-month run beginning in November 2011.

Hinds made his feature film debut in John Boorman's Excalibur in 1981. His screen credits include The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), Persuasion (1995), in which he played Captain Frederick Wentworth, Oscar and Lucinda (1997), and Road to Perdition (2002). He played Carl in Steven Spielberg's Munich (2005) and appeared in There Will Be Blood (2007), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. His role as Aberforth Dumbledore appeared in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011), and he played Roy Bland in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). He voiced Grand Pabbie, the Troll King, in the animated films Frozen (2013) and Frozen II (2019), and portrayed Steppenwolf in Zack Snyder's Justice League (2017) and its 2021 director's cut. His performance in Kenneth Branagh's Belfast (2021) earned him nominations for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.

On television, Hinds portrayed Gaius Julius Caesar in the first season of the BBC/HBO series Rome and played Michael Henchard in a 2004 television adaptation of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, a role that won him the award for Best Actor in a Drama Series at the 2nd Irish Film and Television Awards. He starred opposite Kelly Reilly as DCI James Langton in Above Suspicion and its sequels The Red Dahlia (2010), Deadly Intent (2011), and Silent Scream (2012). Additional television roles include Mance Rayder in Game of Thrones and Captain Sir John Franklin in The Terror. Earlier television work includes Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre (1997), the Knight Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert in Ivanhoe (1997), and Richard McIlkenny in Granada Television's docudrama Who Bombed Birmingham? (1990). He also appeared in season 3 of Shetland in 2016.

Hinds has contributed to audio productions as well, performing as Valmont in a BBC Radio production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and narrating the Penguin Audiobook edition of Ivanhoe. He appeared in Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter's Tale as part of The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare, an audio production that won the 2004 Audie Award for Best Audio Drama. In 2020, The Irish Times ranked him 31st on its list of Ireland's greatest film actors.