James Nesbitt

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 (the latter he was nominated for a Golden Globe award). 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, which was broadcast as part of the BBC's Fairy Tales anthology in 2008.

Additional film roles include appearances in Woody Allen's Match Point, and Danny Boyle's Millions. Theatrical roles include a leading role in Owen McCafferty's Shoot the Crow in 2005, his first time on stage in 11 years. He is a patron of numerous charities, including UNICEF, Action Cancer, and Art Wave. It is often noted that he has a characteristic "arched eyebrow", which he has joked that he has "worked on" since his school days.

Early life and education

Nesbitt was born in 1965 as the fourth child and first son to James and May Nesbitt—a schoolmaster and a civil servant respectively. He grew up in Lisnamurrican, a hamlet near Ballymena, and attended the local primary school, which was headed by his father. When he was 11, the family moved to Blagh, near Coleraine. 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. 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.

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 at Jordanstown 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." On the suggestion of his father, he moved to England to enroll at the Central School of Speech and Drama. On growing up as a Protestant in Northern Ireland, Nesbitt has spoken of being lost and misrepresented: "When 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...'."

Early career

Only a few days after leaving Central in 1987, Nesbitt had secured an agent and a bit part in Virtuoso, a BBC biographical film about John Ogdon. He worked for two days on the production, earning £250 a day, which he describes as being "enormous money". The programme was not broadcast until 1989 but was his television debut. He made his professional stage debut in Up on the Roof at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth before going into a "shockingly reviewed but exciting" world tour of Hamlet, in which he played Guildenstern, Barnardo and the second gravedigger.
"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.


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. 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. The New York Times called his performance "jaunty" and "bemused".

In 1994 he played Damien in Daniel Magee's Paddywack at the Cockpit Theatre, 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]". While in New Haven he once again felt the same disconnected identity as he did at Central. 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 "especially 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". Cold Feet ran for five series, concluding with four 90-minute episodes in 2003 in which Nesbitt's character deals with the death 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). He won the National Television Award for Most Popular Comedy Actor in 2003.

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. 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. 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.

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." 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. 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".

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. 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, his parent's home was vandalised by Protestants, and threats were made on his life. 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. In an analysis of the film in History & Memory, Aileen Blaney opines that it is Nesbitt's real-life "household name" status that made his portrayal of Cooper such a success, offering the thought that Nesbitt's "celebrity status" mirrors that of Cooper's in the 1970s.

"Post-Bloody Sunday"

From the third series of Murphy's Law, Nesbitt adopted a handlebar moustache and a darker look.

Bloody Sunday established Nesbitt as a serious dramatic actor and turned his career in a new direction; he has described his career since 2002 as "post-Bloody Sunday". Murphy's Law returned for a full series in 2003 and each year after that. By 2005 Nesbitt had become tired of the formula and threatened to quit unless the structure of the stories was changed. He was made a creative consultant and suggested Murphy keep one undercover role for a full series, instead of changing into a new guise every episode. Alongside his research with former undercover officer Peter Bleksley, Nesbitt hired a personal trainer and grew a Zapata moustache to change Murphy's physical characteristics. The reimagined series marked another milestone in Nesbitt's career; he describes it as "a big moment in [his] life". The role gained him an IFTA for Best Actor in a TV drama in 2003.

In 2003 he was cast in the BBC anthology series The Canterbury Tales, appearing in an episode based on The Miller's Prologue and Tale alongside Billie Piper and Dennis Waterman. On Newsnight Review, Richard Jobson described his performance as "our version of a kind of actor who brings the same thing to the table, generally speaking, each time. And he can do something which brings a kind of familiarity, so you are looking for it. He is almost like a pop star, in a way, you are looking for him doing the things you like best."
"I had a chat with the director and, well, we decided that time did not allow us the luxury of me trying to get the Glasgow thing right. We’d have had to retake certain shots if I’d veered off-course. Although I have to admit that, when I ran my accent past my co-star Daniela Nardini for that film, she screamed with laughter and said that I sounded as if I was incredibly camp. That was definitely a strong reason for me sticking with my own way of talking."
—Nesbitt on accents


The following year he was cast as Jack Parlabane in the adaptation of Christopher Brookmyre's Quite Ugly One Morning for ITV. ITV had requested Nesbitt play the role over the original choice of Douglas Henshall. Brookmyre called the casting of Nesbitt "perfect" and was "really thrilled". The casting of an Ulsterman in a Scottish role caused some outcry; Scotland on Sunday noted that Nesbitt is "as Scottish as James Doohan". Brookmyer wrote Parlabane with a Glaswegian background and Nesbitt was initially to have worked with an accent coach. The accent was discarded after "a chat" between Nesbitt and the director, and when Nesbitt tried it out on co-star Daniela Nardini.

In 2004 he filmed the part of Detective Banner in Match Point, Woody Allen's first film to be shot outside of America in 30 years. Despite accidentally settling himself into Scarlett Johansson's trailer, Nesbitt enjoyed working with Allen, complementing the director's style of filming.

Following the conclusion of filming on the 2005 series of Murphy's Law, Nesbitt planned to take the remainder of the year off, promising to return to acting only if he was shown a good script. That script came when he was offered the part of Socrates in the Trafalgar Studios' production of Owen McCafferty's Shoot the Crow—his first time on stage in 11 years. His role as one of four tilers gained mixed reviews. In The Independent, Michael Coveney described one performance negatively, suggesting the role did not fit the actor. Coveney rated the whole play one star. In The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer described Nesbitt's acting in a performance in the same month as "outstanding".

Nesbitt spent an hour in make-up each day for his role as Hyde, requiring prosthetics to be fitted to his ears and chin, and for contact lenses to be fitted.

Around this time Nesbitt and his agent attended a meeting with BBC controller of fiction Jane Tranter regarding the 2006 series of Murphy's Law. At the conclusion of the meeting, Tranter offered him the script for Jekyll—a new series written by Steven Moffat—suggesting that he might like to take the dual role of Tom Jackman and Hyde. Nesbitt read the script and took the parts as a way of putting a distance between his previous work. Filming was not scheduled to begin until September 2006, increasing his anticipation. He spent an hour each day being made up as Hyde—the modern-day descendant of Mr Hyde; a wig altered his hairline and prosthetics were added to his chin, nose and ear lobes. He also wore black contact lenses to make Hyde "soulless", though CGI was used to show the transformation from Jackman in close-ups. The programme was broadcast on BBC One in June and July 2007. A Times reviewer called Nesbitt "as entertainingly OTT... as a dozen Doctor Who villains, with a palpable sense of menace to boot." For his performance, Nesbitt was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television.

While Jekyll was being broadcast, Nesbitt filmed Cinderella in Belfast—part of an anthology series commissioned by the BBC from Hat Trick Productions. Nesbitt stars alongside Maxine Peake as Professor Hans M. Prince at a modern-day university. He described the character as needing "padding" due to the prince's minor role in the traditional fairy tale. The programme was broadcast in January 2008. A Guardian writer described the script as "embarrassingly bad" and Nesbitt and Peake's on-screen chemistry as "zero".

In late 2007 he filmed the role of Pontius Pilate in The Passion, a BBC/HBO adaptation of the last week in the life of Jesus. After filming, he described the role of Pilate as "impossible to turn down", despite originally rejecting the script due to other filming commitments. His agent told him to re-read the script before making a final decision, something he was glad he did. Contrary to previous portrayals of Pilate, Nesbitt played the biblical figure as "nice", and—as when playing Jack Parlabane—used his own accent. The serial is due to air in the UK during Easter week 2008. Shortly after filming The Passion, he filmed the part of journalist Max Raban in the Carnival Films thriller Midnight Man, which is due for broadcast on ITV in April 2008.

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. He hosted the Irish Film and Television Awards ceremony on three consecutive occasions between 2002 and 2005 and has presented the British Independent Film Awards since 2005. Additionally he presented a 2007 edition of the late-night Channel 4 comedy The Friday Night Project and the football DVD Eat My Goal, which shows footballers making embarrassing mistakes in games for their club or country.

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. While frequently mocked in popular media, and labelled as "costing him some credibility" 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."

In 2004 he joined the supergroup Twisted X to produce "Born in England", an unofficial anthem for the England national football team's entry in the UEFA Euro 2004 tournament. His vocals have also appeared in Lucky Break and an episode of Cold Feet. The song he performed in the latter—"(Love Is) The Tender Trap"—was released on one of the series' soundtrack albums. A fan of Irish band Ash, he made a cameo in their unreleased film Slashed.

Personal life

Family

Nesbitt met his wife Sonia during the Hamlet production in 1989. They had both attended Central at the same time. The two split up for a year after the release of Hear My Song but reunited and married in 1994.[2] They have two daughters—Peggy (born 1998) and Mary (born 2002). His sister-in-law is Victoria Forbes Adam, the director of the Coalition Against Child Soldiers.[27] His sisters—Margaret, Kathryn and Andrea—all became teachers.[4]

In 2002 a Sunday tabloid published an interview with a legal secretary who claimed to have had a "two-month, cocaine-fuelled affair" with him. Shortly afterwards, another tabloid story revealed an affair with a prostitute, who claimed Nesbitt had boasted of affairs with his Cold Feet co-star Kimberley Joseph, and Amanda Brunker, a former Miss Ireland. Commenting on the publication of details about his personal life, Nesbitt has said he feared that he would lose his marriage, though the exposing of his "dual life" allowed him to "take a long and considered look at" himself. Years later, he described what happened as strengthening his marriage.

Charity and community work

Nesbitt is a patron of Wave, a charity set up to support those traumatised by the Troubles. The charity faced closure due to funding problems before Nesbitt encouraged celebrities and artists to become involved. Since 2005 he has been a UNICEF ambassador, working with HIV and Aids sufferers, and former child soldiers in Africa, a role he describes as "a privilege". Writing in The Independent about his visit to Zambia in 2006, Nesbitt concluded that the children he met were owed a social and moral responsibility. The article was described in the Evening Standard as "moving and notably well-crafted". Since 1999 he has been a patron of Action Cancer, a result of both his father's affliction with prostate cancer and a storyline in the second series of Cold Feet, where his character suffered testicular cancer. He has been an honorary patron of Youth Lyric, one of Ireland's largest theatre schools, since 2007.

He is a fan of football teams Coleraine F.C. and Manchester United F.C.. In 2003 he made a donation of "thousands of pounds" to Coleraine, after the team came close to bankruptcy. He has called the team "a heartbeat of the town [Coleraine]" and encouraged more people to watch Irish League football. He was a vocal opponent of Malcolm Glazer's 2005 takeover of Manchester United, though after he did television advertisements promoting executive boxes at Old Trafford he was criticised by fans. As a result, he pledged one half of his £10,000 fee to the "Shareholders United" group and the other half to UNICEF.

Honours

In June 2003 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Ulster for his contributions to drama. A listing compiled by industry experts for the Radio Times in 2004 named him the sixth most powerful figure in TV drama.