Stephen Rea

Stephen Rea is an Irish actor born in 1946 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where his father worked as a bus driver and his mother was a housewife. His family was Protestant but held sympathies toward Irish nationalism. Rea studied English at Queen's University Belfast and later trained in drama at the Abbey Theatre School in Dublin. His connection to playwright Stewart Parker dates to their shared time as students at Queen's University Belfast.

Rea launched his stage career as a member of Dublin's Focus Theatre, where in the late 1970s he worked alongside Gabriel Byrne and Colm Meaney. In 1974, he appeared at the Royal Court Theatre in London in Sam Shepard's directorial debut, a production of Shepard's play Geography of a Horse Dreamer. His friendship with Shepard had begun in the early 1970s, and the two would collaborate again decades later when Rea appeared in Kicking a Dead Horse at the Abbey Theatre in 2007 and Ages of the Moon in 2009, both written by Shepard and both subsequently transferred to New York. In 2009, Rea also returned to the Abbey for the world premiere of Sebastian Barry's Tales of Ballycumber. He went on to star in Enda Walsh's 2014 play Ballyturk and appeared in Out of the Dark alongside Julia Stiles, Scott Speedman, and Alejandro Furth. Rea is also known for his work at the Gate Theatre in Dublin and the Royal Court Theatre in London.

In 1980, Rea co-founded the Field Day Theatre Company with Brian Friel, Tom Paulin, Seamus Heaney, and Seamus Deane. His Broadway career includes a 1992 appearance in Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, for which he received the Theatre World Award in 1993.

Rea first reached international film audiences through Neil Jordan's 1992 film The Crying Game, for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He became a frequent collaborator with Jordan, appearing in Interview with the Vampire (1994), Michael Collins (1996), The End of the Affair (1999), Breakfast on Pluto (2005), and Greta (2018). In 2011, he took on the role of antagonist Gatehouse in the BBC crime drama The Shadow Line, created by Hugo Blick. In 2023, he appeared as Frank, husband to the character played by Kathy Bates, in the film The Miracle Club.

Among his voice credits, Rea was engaged to speak the words of Gerry Adams during the period when Sinn Féin was subject to a broadcasting ban, from 1988 to 1994. In April 2012, he read James Joyce's short story "The Dead" on RTÉ Radio 1, and on Bloomsday, June 16, 2012, he narrated a BBC Radio 4 production of Ulysses.

Rea's accolades include an Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe nomination, a Tony Award nomination, two BAFTA Awards, and three Irish Film and Television Award wins. He won a BAFTA Award in 2015 for his performance in The Honourable Woman. In 2004, Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University each awarded him an honorary degree in recognition of his contributions to theatre and the performing arts. In 2020, The Irish Times ranked him the 13th greatest Irish film actor of all time.

From 1983 until their divorce in 2003, Rea was married to Dolours Price, a former Provisional Irish Republican Army bomber and hunger striker who later became a critic of Sinn Féin. The two had met in the 1960s, and Price attended a performance by Rea in The Freedom of the City at the Court Theatre in London in 1973, the night before she participated in a car bombing that injured 200 people. They had two sons together. As of 2012, Rea served as an Ambassador for UNICEF Ireland, and as of 2020 he lives in County Donegal.