James Nesbitt
William James Nesbitt is an actor from Northern Ireland. From 1987, Nesbitt spent seven years performing in plays that varied from the musical Up on the Roof to the political drama Paddywack. He made his feature film debut playing talent agent Fintan O'Donnell in Hear My Song. He got his breakthrough television role playing Adam Williams in the romantic comedy-drama series Cold Feet, which won him a British Comedy Award, a Television and Radio Industries Club Award, and a National Television Award.
Nesbitt's first significant film role came when he appeared as pig farmer "Pig" Finn in Waking Ned. With the rest of the starring cast, he was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award. In Lucky Break, he made his debut as a film lead, playing prisoner Jimmy Hands. The next year, he played Ivan Cooper in the television film Bloody Sunday, about the 1972 shootings in Derry. A departure from his previous "cheeky chappie" roles, the film was a turning point in his career. He won a British Independent Film Award and was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor.
Nesbitt has also starred in Murphy's Law as undercover detective Tommy Murphy, a role that was created for him by writer Colin Bateman. The role twice gained Nesbitt Best Actor nominations at the Irish Film & Television Awards. In 2007, he starred in the dual role of Tom Jackman and Mr Hyde in Steven Moffat's Jekyll, which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination in 2008. Nesbitt has since appeared in several more dramatic roles; he starred alongside Liam Neeson in Five Minutes of Heaven, and was one of three lead actors in the television miniseries Occupation. He also starred in the movies Outcast and The Way. He portrayed Bofur in The Hobbit film series. In 2014, Nesbitt starred as Tony Hughes in the acclaimed BBC One drama series The Missing.
Early life
William James Nesbitt was born on 15 January 1965 in Ballymena. His father, James "Jim" Nesbitt, was the headmaster of the primary school in Lisnamurrican, while his mother, May Nesbitt, was a civil servant. He has three older sisters named Margaret, Kathryn, and Andrea, all of whom eventually became teachers. The family lived in the house adjoining the one-room school where Nesbitt was one of 32 pupils taught by his father, while the other pupils were all farmers' children. He grew up "completely" around women and spent a lot of time alone, "kicking a ball against a wall". He had ambitions to play football for Manchester United or to become a teacher like his father. His parents were Protestants, and Lisnamurrican was in "Paisley country". The family spent Sunday evenings singing hymns around the piano. Jim marched in the Ballymena Young Conquerors flute band and Nesbitt joined him playing the flute. After the Drumcree conflicts, they stopped marching with the band. The family's residence in the countryside left them largely unaffected by the Troubles, although Nesbitt, his father, and one of his sisters narrowly escaped a car bomb explosion outside Ballymena County Hall in the early 1970s.When Nesbitt was 11 years old, the family moved to Coleraine, County Londonderry, where May worked for the Housing Executive. He completed his primary education at Blagh primary school then moved on to Coleraine Academical Institution. In 1978, when he was 13, his parents took him to audition for the Riverside Theatre's Christmas production of Oliver! Nesbitt sang "Bohemian Rhapsody" at the audition and won the part of the Artful Dodger in his acting debut. He continued to act and sing with Riverside until he was 16, and appeared at festivals and as an extra in Play For Today: The Cry. He got his Equity card when the actor playing Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio broke his ankle two days before the performance, and Nesbitt stepped in to take his place. Acting had not initially appealed to him, but he "felt a light go on" after he saw the film The Winslow Boy. When he was 15, he got his first paid job as a bingo caller at Barry's Amusements in Portrush. He was paid £1 per hour for the summer job and would also, on occasions, work as the brake man on the big dipper attraction.
Nesbitt left CAI at the age of 18 and began a degree in French at Ulster Polytechnic in Jordanstown. He stayed for a year before leaving. In a 1999 interview, he said, "I had the necessary in my head, but I just couldn't be bothered. Being 18 is the worst age to expect people to learn things. There are other things to be bothered with, like girls and football." He made the decision to leave one morning when he was trying to write an overdue essay on existentialism in Les Mains Sales by Jean-Paul Sartre at 4 a.m. His father suggested that he should move to London if he wanted to continue acting, so Nesbitt enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He felt lost and misrepresented when he first arrived in London, because of his Northern Irish background: "When I first came to drama school I was a Paddy the minute I walked in. And I remember going to drama school and them all saying to me, 'Aww, yeah, Brits out,' and I was like 'It's a wee bit more complicated than that, you know.'" He graduated in 1987, at the age of 22.
Theatre and ''Hear My Song''
The day after leaving CSSD in 1987, Nesbitt got a bit part in Virtuoso, a BBC Two Screen Two television play about the life of John Ogdon. He worked for two days on the play, earning £250 per day. His first professional stage appearance came in the same year, when he played Keith in Up on the Roof. The musical ran at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth, before transferring to the London West End. Nesbitt reprised the role when the production returned to Plymouth in early 1989. Roger Malone in The Stage and Television Today wrote that Nesbitt "steals the show with the best lines and best delivery as he laconically squares up to life with an easy contentment". Nesbitt appeared in two other plays in 1989; in June, he played Dukes Frederick and Senior in Paul Jepson's As You Like It at the Rose Theatre Club, and then appeared in Yuri Lyubimov's version of Hamlet. Hamlet had been translated back to English from Boris Pasternak's Russian translation. It ran at the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester for a month before a transfer to the Old Vic and then a nine-month world tour. Nesbitt played Guildenstern, Barnardo and the second gravedigger. He recalled that the play received "shocking" reviews, but was exciting.In the early 1990s, he lived with fellow actor Jerome Flynn and earned money by signing fan mail for the successful star of Soldier Soldier. In his debut feature film, Hear My Song, Nesbitt played Fintan O'Donnell, a struggling theatrical agent and friend of Mickey O'Neill. A New York Times critic wrote, "the jaunty, bemused Mr. Nesbitt, manages to combine soulfulness with sly humor". The praise he received made him self-assured and complacent; in 2001, he recalled, "When I did Hear My Song, I disappeared so far up my own arse afterwards. I thought, 'Oh, that's it, I've cracked it.' And I'm glad that happened, because you then find out how expendable actors are." His attitude left him out of work for six months after the film was released. Until 1994, he mixed his stage roles with supporting roles on television in episodes of Boon, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Covington Cross, Lovejoy, and Between the Lines. In 1993, he appeared in Love Lies Bleeding, an instalment of the BBC anthology series Screenplay and his first appearance in a production directed by Michael Winterbottom; he later appeared in Go Now, Jude and Welcome to Sarajevo. A Guardian journalist wrote that "he showed himself to be a generous supporting actor" in Jude and Sarajevo.
Back on stage, he appeared as Doalty in Translations, Aidan in Una Pooka, Damien in Paddywack, and Jesus in Darwin's Flood. Paddywack, in which Nesbitt's character is suspected by others of being an IRA member, transferred to the United States for a run at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut in October 1994. A Variety critic called Damien "the play's only fully developed character" and commended Nesbitt for giving "the one strong, telling performance ". In 1996, Nesbitt appeared in an episode of the BBC Northern Ireland television drama Ballykissangel, playing Leo McGarvey, the ex-boyfriend of Assumpta Fitzgerald and love rival of Peter Clifford. He reprised the role for four episodes in 1998.
''Cold Feet'' and early films
In 1996, Nesbitt auditioned to play Adam Williams, the male lead in Cold Feet, an ITV Comedy Premiere about three couples in different stages of their romantic relationships. The audition came about through a mutual friend of Nesbitt's and the director, Declan Lowney. The producer, Christine Langan, had also recalled his performances in Hear My Song and Go Now. Adam had not been written with an Irishman in mind to play him—English writer Mike Bullen had written the character as a thinly veiled portrayal of himself in his youth—but Nesbitt wanted to take the opportunity to appear in a contemporary drama as an ordinary man from Northern Ireland with no connection to the Troubles, especially after the Troubles-based plot of Love Lies Bleeding. Cold Feet was a critical success; it won the 1997 Golden Rose of Montreux and the 1997 British Comedy Award for Best ITV Comedy and was thus commissioned for a full series. Cold Feets first series aired at the end of 1998 and was followed by the second series in 1999. A storyline in that series featured Adam being diagnosed with testicular cancer, which inspired Nesbitt to become a patron of the charity Action Cancer.By the time of the third series, Nesbitt and the other cast members were able to influence the show's production; an episode featuring Adam's stag weekend was due to be filmed on location in Dublin but Nesbitt suggested it be filmed in Belfast and Portrush instead. Several scenes were filmed at his old workplace Barry's Amusements, although they were cut from the broadcast episode. At the end of the fourth series in 2001, Nesbitt decided to resign and move on to other projects. Executive producer Andy Harries persuaded him to stay for one more series by suggesting that Adam be killed off, so Nesbitt signed on for the fifth series. During pre-production of the fifth series, Mike Bullen decided to kill off Adam's wife Rachel instead.
Cold Feet ran for five years from 1998 to 2003, and Nesbitt won the British Comedy Award for Best TV Comedy Actor in 2000, the Television and Radio Industries Club Award for Drama TV Performer of the Year in 2002, the National Television Award for Most Popular Comedy Performance in 2003, and the TV Quick Award for Best Actor in 2003. Nesbitt credits the role with raising his profile with the public. Further television roles during these five years included women's football team coach John Dolan in the first two series of Kay Mellor's Playing the Field, investigative journalists Ryan and David Laney in Resurrection Man and Touching Evil II respectively, and womaniser Stanley in Women Talking Dirty.
Nesbitt's performance in Hear My Song had also impressed first-time screenwriter and film director Kirk Jones, who cast him in his 1998 feature film Waking Ned. Playing amiable pig farmer "Pig" Finn brought Nesbitt to international attention, particularly in the United States ; the cast was nominated for the 1999 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Theatrical Motion Picture. In 1999, he appeared as the paramilitary "Mad Dog" Billy Wilson in The Most Fertile Man in Ireland. The following year, he appeared in Declan Lowney's feature debut, Wild About Harry. Lowney had personally asked him to appear in the supporting role of cross-dressing Unionist politician Walter Adair. In 2001, he made his debut as a lead actor in a feature film in Peter Cattaneo's Lucky Break. He played Jimmy Hands, an incompetent bank robber who masterminds an escape from a prison by staging a musical as a distraction. On preparing for the role, Nesbitt said, "Short of robbing a bank there wasn't much research I could have done but we did spend a day in Wandsworth Prison and that showed the nightmare monotony of prisoners' lives. I didn't interview any of the inmates because I thought it would be a little patronising as it was research for a comedy and also because we were going home every night in our fancy cars to sleep in our fancy hotels." The film was a total flop, despite receiving positive feedback from test audiences in the United States.