Stephen J. Dillane (born 30 November 1956) is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Leonard Woolf in The Hours, Glen Foy in Goal!, Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones and American politician Thomas Jefferson in the HBO miniseries John Adams, a role which earned him a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie. An accomplished theatre actor, he has also won a Tony Award for his lead performance in Tom Stoppard's play The Real Thing.
Early life
Dillane was born in Kensington, London, to an English mother, Bridget (née Curwen), and an Australian surgeon father, Dr. John Dillane. His younger brother, Richard, is also an actor.
He studied history and political science at the University of Exeter, and afterward became a journalist for the Croydon Advertiser. Unhappy in his career, he read how actor Trevor Eve gave up architecture for acting and was inspired to enter the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. During his early acting career, he was known as Stephen Dillon but reverted to his birth name in the 1990s.
Career
Dillane is a distinguished theatre actor; his notable roles include Archer in The Beaux' Stratagem (Royal National Theatre, 1989), Prior Walter in Angels in America (1993), Hamlet (1994), Clov in Samuel Beckett's Endgame (1996), Uncle Vanya (1998), Henry in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing (for which he won a Tony Award in 2000), The Coast of Utopia (2002), and a one-man version of Macbeth (2005). He has also performed T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets in London and New York City, and was seen in the 2010 Bridge Project's productions of The Tempest and As You Like It.
Onscreen, Dillane may be best known for his portrayal of Horatio in the 1990 film adaptation of Hamlet. He played Michael Henderson in Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), a character based on British journalist Michael Nicholson, and the impatient and easily agitated Harker in Spy Game (2001).
Dillane is also known for his portrayal of Leonard Woolf in The Hours (2002), legendary English professional golfer Harry Vardon in The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005) and Glen Foy in the Goal! trilogy. He also starred in John Adams as Thomas Jefferson. In July 2011, he was cast as Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones. In 2012, he played Rupert Keel, head of the private security company organisation Byzantium, in the television series Hunted.
The same year, Dillane starred in the British independent film Papadopoulos & Sons, in which he plays a successful entrepreneur, Harry Papadopoulos, who rediscovers his life after being forced to start again from nothing following a banking crisis. His real-life son, Frank Dillane, plays his son in the film. In January 2013, it was reported that Dillane had been cast as the male lead in the Sky Atlantic series The Tunnel.
Personal life
Dillane has two sons with actress Naomi Wirthner: Seamus Dillane and actor Frank Dillane, who is best known for playing the teenage Voldemort in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
References
External links
- Stephen Dillane at the Internet Movie Database
- Stephen Dillane at the Internet Broadway Database
- RealAudio Interview for Macbeth
