Conleth Hill

Conleth Seamus Eoin Croiston Hill, born on 24 November 1964 in Ballycastle, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, is an actor whose work spans stage and screen in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. He trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as a Clothworkers Company Scholar, completing the acting programme in 1989.

Hill made his Broadway debut in Marie Jones' Stones in His Pockets, a production that earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play, a Drama Desk Special Award, and a Theatre World Special Award, all in 2001. His performance in the Canadian staging of the same play brought him a Dora Mavor Moore Award. The role also garnered him an Olivier Award for Best Actor in 2001. Hill returned to Broadway with The Seafarer, which ran in 2007, and for that production he received a second Tony Award nomination, this time for Best Featured Actor in a Play, as well as the 2008 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play.

Beyond Broadway, Hill is widely recognized for portraying Varys in the HBO series Game of Thrones, a role he held from 2011 to 2019, adapted from George R. R. Martin's novel series A Song of Ice and Fire. He was nominated multiple times between 2011 and 2016 for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series for that show. In 2013, Martin publicly suggested on his website that Hill would be a fitting choice to play the title character in a potential television adaptation of Martin's science fiction novel Tuf Voyaging. Hill also appeared as Edward Darby in the television series Suits, alongside his Game of Thrones co-star Michelle Fairley, and played the German professor Max Staefel in a 2002 television adaptation of Goodbye, Mr Chips. He appeared as Carlos Santini in Season 3, Episode 4 of Derry Girls, and took on the role of "Mum" to Peter Kay's character Geraldine McQueen in Peter Kay's Britain's Got the Pop Factor... and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice, a spoof of television talent competitions.

Hill comes from a family with deep ties to the entertainment industry. His older brother works as a cameraman, his sister is a producer, and his younger brother Ronan is a sound engineer who has won four Emmy Awards for his sound mixing work on Game of Thrones.