Jaye Davidson and Stephen Rea in The Crying Game
Stephen Rea (born 31 October 1946) is an Irish film and stage actor. Rea has appeared in high profile films such as V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto. Rea was nominated for an Academy Award for his lead performance as Fergus in the1992 film The Crying Game.
Rea was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of a bus driver. One of four children in a working class Presbyterian family, he attended Belfast High School and the Queen’s University of Belfast, taking a degree in English. Politically, in spite of his religious background, Rea is a Protestant Nationalist.
Rea trained at the Abbey Theatre School in Dublin. In the late 1970s, he acted in the Focus Company in Dublin with Gabriel Byrne and Colm Meaney. During the broadcasting ban on Sinn Féin imposed by Margaret Thatcher’s government, in order to cut the ‘oxygen of publicity’, it was interpreted that Sinn Féin members could not be heard making statements expressing the views of Sinn Féin, so Rea was one of many actors contacted to provide an actor’s voice to get around that problem. After appearing on the stage and in television and film for many years in Ireland and Britain, Rea came to international attention when he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film The Crying Game. He is a frequent collaborator with Irish film maker Neil Jordan. Rea has long been associated with some of the most important writers in Ireland. His association with playwright Stewart Parker, for example, began when they were students together at the Queen’s University of Belfast.
Rea helped establish the Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 with Tom Paulin, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane. In recognition for his contribution to theatre and performing arts, Rea was given honorary degrees from both the Queen’s University of Belfast and the University of Ulster in 2004.
Stephen Rea’s friendship with American playwright and actor Sam Shepard dates back to the early 1970′s, and he starred in Shepard’s directorial debut of his play “Geography of a Horse Dreamer” at the Royal Court Theatre in 1974. In 2007, Rea began a successful and acclaimed relationship with both the Abbey Theatre and Sam Shepard, appearing in Kicking a Dead Horse (2007) and Ages of the Moon (2009), both penned by Shepard and also both transferred to New York. Rea returned to the Abbey in 2009 to appear in the world premiere of Sebastian Barry’s Tales of Ballycumber.
In 2011 Rea featured in the BBC crime drama The Shadow Line, playing antagonist Gatehouse.
