James Nesbitt

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James Nesbitt
James Nesbitt in 2007
Other namesJimmy Nesbitt
OccupationActor
Years active1987 – present
Spouse(s)Sonia Forbes-Adam
(1994 – present)
AwardsBritish Comedy Award for Best TV Comedy Actor
2000 Cold Feet
TRIC Award for Drama TV Performer of the Year
2002 Cold Feet
British Independent Film Award for Best Actor
2002 Bloody Sunday
Stockholm International Film Festival Award for Best Actor
2002 Bloody Sunday
National Television Award for Most Popular Comedy Performance
2003 Cold Feet

James Nesbitt (born 15 January 1965) is a Northern Irish actor. Nesbitt began his career in the 1980s after leaving the Central School of Speech and Drama. His first appearances on stage and screen were critically praised and he came to wider attention in the mid-1990s after appearing in Cold Feet and Waking Ned. He took the lead role in Peter Cattaneo's Lucky Break in 2001 and in the same year was cast as the title character in Murphy's Law, the role being created for him by Colin Bateman. In 2002 he played Ivan Cooper in Bloody Sunday, a dramatisation of the events of 1972, for which he won the British Independent Film Award for Best Actor.

Bloody Sunday established him as a competent dramatic actor and since 2002 he has appeared in the fact-based drama Wall of Silence, the adaptation of Quite Ugly One Morning, and Steven Moffat's Jekyll. Comedic roles are still offered to him; he appeared alongside Dennis Waterman and Billie Piper in the light-hearted BBC series The Canterbury Tales and has filmed an adaptation of Cinderella, to be broadcast as part of the BBC's Fairy Tales anthology in 2007.

Early life and education

Nesbitt was born in 1965 as the fourth child and first son to a schoolmaster and a civil servant.[1] He grew up in Lisnamurrican, a hamlet near Ballymena, and attended the local primary school, which was headed by his father.[2] When he was 11, the family moved to Blagh, near Coleraine.[2] He received secondary education at the Coleraine Academical Institution, where a teacher encouraged him to try acting at the Riverside Theatre. He made his acting debut at the age of 13 as the Artful Dodger in a production of Oliver!, the auditions of which his parents "dragged" him to.[1] He continued to appear in Christmas productions, and got his Equity card at the age of 17 after stepping in to a production of Pinocchio when the actor playing Jiminy Cricket was injured.[3]

Despite enjoying these acting stints, a career as an actor did not appeal to Nesbitt; he planned to follow his father and sisters into teaching, wanting to specialise in French. He began reading for a degree at the University of Ulster but dropped out after getting "fed up", saying "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."[3] On the suggestion of his father, he moved to England to enroll at the Central School of Speech and Drama.[1] On growing up as a Protestant in Northern Ireland, Nesbitt has spoken of being lost and misrepresented: "[W]hen I first went to the Central School of Speech and Drama ... I either had the whole of London thinking I was a Paddy, or I had drama-school students going, 'God, yeah, Brits out', and I'd be going, 'Well...'."[4]

Career

Early career

"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."

—Nesbitt on his unplanned career break.[1]

In 1987 Nesbitt made his professional stage debut in Up on the Roof at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth. After leaving Central he went into a "shockingly reviewed but exciting" world tour of Hamlet, in which he played Guildenstern, Barnardo and the second gravedigger.[5] His television debut came shortly afterwards when he got a bit part in Virtuoso, a BBC biographical film about John Ogdon.[6] He lived with fellow actor and friend Jerome Flynn for a few months in the early 1990s, signing fan mail for the successful star of Soldier Soldier, before being cast in as Fintan O'Donnell in Hear My Song. His part was critically praised, but left him unemployed for six months afterwards when his newfound success made him complacent.[3] The long-term effects of the role were more positive; his acting impressed both Kirk Jones and Christine Langan enough to cast him in Waking Ned and Cold Feet respectively.[3][7] The New York Times called his performance "jaunty" and "bemused".[8]

In 1994 he played Damien in Daniel Magee's Paddywack in London, transferring to a production at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut in October. Variety commended his acting of "the play's only fully developed character" as "the one strong, telling performance [of the cast]".[9] While in New Haven he once again felt the same disconnected identity as he did at Central.[4] In the 1990s he featured in several films directed by Michael Winterbottom, including Love Lies Bleeding, Go Now, and the award-winning Jude.

In 1996 he was cast in Granada Television's one-off television romantic comedy Cold Feet after producer Christine Langan saw his performances in Hear My Song and Go Now. The director, Declan Lowney, already knew him through a friend and cast him as Adam Williams, a semi-autobiographical depiction of the writer Mike Bullen. Although Adam was not written as an Irish character, Nesbitt went out of his way to get an audition, eager to play an Irishman unconnected to the Troubles, which he believed was rare in contemporary drama. The programme was not broadcast until 1997, and in the meantime he took other roles.

Breakthrough

After Jude he was cast in the BBC Northern Ireland drama television series Ballykissangel as Leo McGarvey, the boyfriend of Assumpta Fitzgerald (the lead, played by Dervla Kirwan). The character appeared in one episode in 1996 and then five more in 1998, as a point in the love triangle that kept apart the series protagonists Assumpta and Father Peter Clifford (played by Stephen Tompkinson). Meanwhile, Nesbitt appeared in another Winterbottom film, as Gregg the cameraman in the Palme d'Or-nominated Welcome to Sarajevo. Cold Feet was broadcast in 1997 and, after winning the Golden Rose of Montreux, was commissioned for a full six-episode series that was filmed in 1998. The programme became one of the most popular shows on British television, though reaction to Nesbitt's performance was mixed; on the BBC 2 arts programme The Late Review, Germaine Greer described his acting in the first episode as "awful", while Tony Parsons longed for Nesbitt to have fallen off a scissor lift, that Adam appeared on in one scene, and died. Parsons' comments upset Nesbitt and his wife, and in an interview shortly afterwards he said "I'd rather be me than Tony Parsons; I'd rather have my life than his; I'd rather be content with my lot than be involved with some esoteric heap of s***e".[3] Cold Feet ran for five series, concluding with four 90-minute specials in 2003 in which Nesbitt's character deals with the loss of his wife Rachel (played by Helen Baxendale). Over the six years the programme was on the air, Nesbitt was nominated for three British Comedy Awards (winning the gong for Best TV Comedy Actor at the 2000 ceremony).[10] He won the National Television Award for Most Popular Comedy Actor in 2003.[11]

He came to international attention in 1998 when he played amiable pig farmer Pig Finn in Kirk Jones's directorial debut feature Waking Ned. The part was offered to him in late 1997 and filming would have commenced at the time his first daughter was born, so he turned down the part. His wife read the script and convinced him to accept the role.[3] The film was well-received worldwide, particularly in the United States where the cast was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Theatrical Motion Picture in 1999.[12] Additional roles around this time included John Dolan, the coach of a women's football team, in the first two series of Kay Mellor's Playing the Field (appearing alongside his Cold Feet co-star John Thomson), investigative journalists Ryan and David Laney in Resurrection Man and Touching Evil respectively, and trouble-maker Stanley in Women Talking Dirty.[3]

In 2001 he made his debut as a lead in a feature film playing crooning crook Jimmy Hands, in Peter Cattaneo's Lucky Break. On preparing for the role of a prisoner, 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.[13] The film was a critical and commercial failure. The same year he appeared as the title character, DS Tommy Murphy, in Murphy's Law. The role was created for Nesbitt by Colin Bateman, a close friend of Nesbitt's. Bateman had lobbied for Nesbitt to be cast in Divorcing Jack, but he was not a popular enough actor when the film went into production in 1997.[14] In The Guardian Gareth McLean wrote "the likeable James Nesbitt turned in a strong, extremely watchable central performance, though rarely did he look taxed by his efforts, and his chemistry with Harrison was promising and occasionally electric".[15]

A turning point in his career came in 2001 when he was cast as Ivan Cooper in the factual drama Bloody Sunday, directed by Paul Greengrass. The events of Bloody Sunday passed him by when he was young; he was six years old at the time and it did not figure into his education. To prepare for the role he met with Cooper, talking with him for many hours. He described reading the script as "a learning process" that made up his mind whether he should take the part.[16] There was controversy when the film was released; Unionists criticised Nesbitt for saying that Northern Irish protestants felt "a collective guilt" over the events in Londonderry,[17] his parent's home was vandalised by Protestants, and threats were made on his life.[18] Aside, the film and Nesbitt received critical acclaim, and he won the British Independent Film Award for Best Actor, and the Best Actor prize at the Stockholm Film Festival.

"Post-Bloody Sunday"

In 2005 he appeared in Owen McCafferty's Shoot The Crow at the Trafalgar Studios. His performance was described as "exemplary"[19] and having "a blend of natural talent and relaxed approach".[20] In September 2006 he began work on Jekyll, a six-part serial TV drama based on Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde written and produced by award-winning TV dramatist Steven Moffat.[21] The serial, a BBC America coproduction, aired on BBC One from June 16, 2007 and was screened a few months later in the United States.

Side projects

In 2002 Nesbitt made his documentary debut as the presenter of James Nesbitt's Blazing Saddles, a production for BBC Choice that saw him spend two weeks in Las Vegas at the National Finals Rodeo and the Miss Rodeo America pageant.[22] He hosted the Irish Film and Television Awards ceremony on three consecutive occasions between 2002 and 2005[23] and has presented the British Independent Film Awards since 2005.[24] Additionally he presented a 2007 edition of the late-night Channel 4 comedy The Friday Night Project.[25] An amateur golfer since his teenage years, Nesbitt joined the European team for Sky One's All*Star Cup in 2005, returning in 2006. He signed up to a series of television advertisements for the Yell Group in 2003, playing a hapless character called "James" for the company's Yellow Pages campaign until 2006.[26] While frequently mocked in popular media, and labelled as "costing him some credibility"[6] Nesbitt has said "I'd rather be in the Yellow Pages ads than a lot of the shit films that come out in this country."[5]

Personal life

Nesbitt met actress Sonia Forbes-Adam at Central in 1989 when they both appeared in a tour of Hamlet. They married in 1993, have two children, Peggy (born 1998 and named after Nesbitt's sister) and Mary (born 2002), and live in Herne Hill.[27] Nesbitt is an ambassador of Amnesty International and Unicef, which he describes as "a privilege".[28] In June 2003 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Ulster for his contribution to drama.[29] He is a supporter of Manchester United F.C. and Coleraine F.C. (he was part of a campaign to save the club when it faced tax troubles).[30]

Selected credits and awards

Stage

Year Production Role Other notes
1987 Up on the Roof Professional stage debut
1989 Hamlet Guildenstern World tour
1994 Paddywack Damien Written by Daniel Magee
1994 Darwin's Flood Jesus Played at Bush Theatre.
2005 Shoot the Crow Socrates Written by Owen Mcafferty and directed by Robert Delamere.
Played at Trafalgar Studios.

Screen

Year Series Role Awards and other notes
1989 Screen Two: Virtuoso Bit part Television debut
1991 Hear My Song Fintan O'Donnell Film debut
1996 Jude Uncle Joe
Ballykissangel Leo McGarvey Television series, 1996 and 1998
Breakout role
1997 Cold Feet Adam Williams Television series, 1997 and 1998–2003
Won, British Comedy Award for Best TV Comedy Actor, 2000
Won, TRIC Award for Drama TV Performer of the Year, 2002[1]
Won, National Television Award for Most Popular Comedy Performance, 2003
Nominated, British Comedy Award for Best TV Comedy Actor, 1999 and 2001
Welcome to Sarajevo Gregg
1998 Waking Ned Pig Finn Nomination, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast
2001 Lucky Break Jimmy Hands First lead role in a feature film
Murphy's Law Tommy Murphy Television series, 2001 and 2003–present
Won, Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor in a TV Drama, 2003
Nominated, Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor [in a Lead Role] in Television, 2005 and 2007
2002 James Nesbitt's Blazing Saddles Himself (presenter) Documentary debut
Bloody Sunday Ivan Cooper Televison film with limited theatrical release
Won, British Independent Film Award for Best Actor
Won, Stockholm International Film Festival Award for Best Actor
Nominated, Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor in a Feature Film
Nominated, BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor[2]
2003 The Most Fertile Man in Ireland "Mad Dog" Billy Wilson
The Canterbury Tales Nick Zakian 1 episode ("The Miller's Tale")
Nominated, National Television Award for Most Popular Actor, 2004
2004 Wall of Silence Stuart Robe One-off television drama
Nominated, Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor in a TV Drama, 2004
Passer By Joe Keyes Two-part television drama
Quite Ugly One Morning Jack Parabane Two-part television drama
Millions Ronnie Cunningham
2005 Match Point Detective Banner
2007 Jekyll Tom Jackman/Hyde Dual role in six-part television series
Cinderella Professor Hans M. Prince Single part in four-part television anthology
2008 Midnight Man Max Raban Three-part television serial
The Passion Pontius Pilate Television series

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Steiner, Susie (2001-10-27). "The Irish question". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-11-06. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ a b Starrett, Ian (2003-07-10). "Saluting one of Ulster's own". The News Letter. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Dowle, Jayne (1999-03-06). "Call me Jimmy – The Big Interview". The Times. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ a b Thomas, David (2000-11-20). "Hot Property". The Independent. Retrieved 2007-11-06. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ a b Rees, Jasper (2005-09-14). "Jane Austen? She gives me the willies". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2007-11-10. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ a b Billen, Andrew (2007-07-19). "A game of Hyde and seek". The Times. Retrieved 2007-11-10. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ Smith, Rupert (2003). Cold Feet: The Complete Companion. London: Granada Media. p. p. 64. ISBN 023300999X. {{cite book}}: |page= has extra text (help)
  8. ^ Maslin, Janet (1992-01-19). "Irish Tenor Is Focus Of Intrigue and Blarney". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-06. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ Taylor, Markland (1994-10-17). "Paddywack Review". Variety. Retrieved 2007-11-06. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Staff writer (2000-12-17). "Award for 'Cold Feet' star". BBC News Online. Retrieved 2007-11-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ Staff writer (2003-10-28). "EastEnders dominates awards". BBC News Online. Retrieved 2007-11-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ "5th Annual SAG Awards™ Nominees". SAG Awards Official Website. 1999. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
  13. ^ Multiple contributors (2001-08-22). "You ask the questions: James Nesbitt". The Independent. Retrieved 2007-11-12. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ McCarthy, Gerry (2003-05-04). "A law unto himself". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 2007-12-01. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ^ McLean, Gareth (2001-09-25). "If something can go wrong". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-12-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. ^ Carton, Donna (2001-03-04). "Blood Brothers". Sunday Mirror (at Find Articles). Retrieved 2007-12-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ Staff writer (2002-01-08). "Bloody Sunday actor 'is wrong'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2007-12-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. ^ Synnot, Siobhan (2004-09-05). "Luck of the Irish". Scotland on Sunday. Retrieved 2007-12-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  19. ^ Glass, Charlie (2005) "Shoot the Crow", Online Review London. Retrieved on 2007-02-15
  20. ^ Loveridge, Lizzie (2005-10-12) "Shoot the Crow", CurtainUp. Retrieved on 2007-02-15
  21. ^ BBC (2005-12-13) "James Nesbitt to star in Jekyll", BBC Press Office. Retrieved on 2007-02-15
  22. ^ "James Nesbitt's Blazing Saddles" (Press release). BBC Press Office. 2002-03-01. Retrieved 2007-11-12. {{cite press release}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  23. ^ Staff writer (2005-10-27). "James Nesbitt returns as IFTA host". RTÉ.ie. Retrieved 2007-11-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  24. ^ "2007 host: James Nesbitt". British Independent Film Awards. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
  25. ^ "Show Three". Channel4.com. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
  26. ^ "Yellow Pages launches multi-million pound TV advertising campaign featuring TV star James Nesbitt" (Press release). Yell Group. 2003-03-21. Retrieved 2007-11-12. {{cite press release}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  27. ^ Anonymous (2004-10-17) "Cold Feet hot profit", Sunday Mirror. Retrieved on 2007-02-15
  28. ^ Curtis, Nick (2006-08-21) "Murphy's Law", This is London. Retrieved on 2007-02-15
  29. ^ Press release (2003-07-09) "Honour For 'Cold Feet' Star James Nesbitt", University of Ulster. Retrieved on 2007-02-15
  30. ^ McDonald, Henry (2003-12-07) "Cold Feet star steps in to rescue Coleraine FC", The Observer. Retrieved on 2007-02-15

External links

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