Ciarán Hinds ( KEER-ən; born 9 February 1953) is an Irish actor. Born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Hinds is known for a range of screen and stage roles and has starred in feature films including The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), Persuasion (1995), Oscar and Lucinda (1997), Road to Perdition (2002), The Sum of All Fears (2002), Munich (2005), Amazing Grace (2007), There Will Be Blood (2007), Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Silence (2016), First Man (2018), and Belfast (2021), the last of which earned him nominations for Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Known for his distinctively deep voice, Hinds is also known for his voice role as Grand Pabbie, the Troll King in the animated film Frozen (2013) and its sequel Frozen II (2019). He played General Zakharow in Red Sparrow (2018). He also portrayed Steppenwolf in Zack Snyder's Justice League (2017) and its 2021 director's cut.
His television roles include Julius Caesar in the series Rome, DCI James Langton in Above Suspicion, Mance Rayder in Game of Thrones, and Captain Sir John Franklin in The Terror. In addition, Hinds appeared in season 3 of Shetland (2016), produced by ITV.
As a stage actor Hinds has spent periods with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, and six seasons with Glasgow Citizens' Theatre. Hinds has continued to work on stage throughout his career. In 2020, he was listed at number 31 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
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Early life
Ciarán Hinds was born on 9 February 1953 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Raised as a Catholic in north Belfast, he was one of five children and the only son of his doctor father, Gerry, and schoolteacher and amateur actress mother, Moya.
He was an Irish dancer in his youth and was educated at Holy Family Primary School and St Malachy's College. After leaving St Malachy's he attended the College of Business Studies before enrolling as a law student at Queen's University Belfast but was soon persuaded to pursue acting and abandoned his studies at Queen's to enrol at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, finishing in 1975.
Career
Hinds began his professional acting career at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in a production of Cinderella (1976). He remained a frequent performer at the Citizens' Theatre during the late 1970s and through the mid-1980s. During this same period, Hinds also performed on stage in Ireland with the Abbey Theatre, the Field Day Theatre Company, the Druid Theatre, the Lyric Players' Theatre and at the Project Arts Centre. Hinds made his feature film debut in John Boorman's Excalibur in 1981. In 1987, he was cast by Peter Brook in The Mahabharata, a six-hour theatre piece that toured the world, and he also featured in its 1989 film version. Hinds almost missed the casting call in Paris due to difficulties renewing his Irish passport. In the early 1990s, he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Hinds was featured in two notable television docudramas: Granada Television's docudrama Who Bombed Birmingham? (1990) in which Hinds portrayed Richard McIlkenny, a Belfastman falsely imprisoned for an IRA bombing; and HBO's docudrama Hostages (1993), where he portrayed Irish writer and former hostage Brian Keenan.
He appeared in the title role of the RSC's production of Richard III in 1993, directed by Sam Mendes, who turned to Hinds as a last minute replacement for an injured Simon Russell Beale. On television, he played Edward Parker-Jones in the crime drama series Prime Suspect 3 (1993), Abel Mason in Dame Catherine Cookson's The Man Who Cried (1993), Jim Browner in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes episode "The Cardboard Box" (1994), Fyodor Glazunov in the science fiction miniseries Cold Lazarus (1996), Edward Rochester in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1997), and the Knight Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1997). Hinds played Captain Frederick Wentworth in the film adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion (1995). In 1996, Hinds acted as a police detective in episode "Confessions" of Tales from the Crypt. Hinds gained his most popular recognition as a stage actor for his performance as Larry in the London and Broadway productions of Patrick Marber's Tony Award-nominated play Closer. In 1999, Hinds was awarded both the Theatre World Award for Best Debut in New York and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Special Achievement (Best Ensemble Cast Performance) for his work in Closer. Hinds was on stage in 2001 in The Yalta Game by Brian Friel at Dublin's Gate Theatre. He has featured in a number of made-for-television films, including a portrayal of the French existentialist Albert Camus in Broken Morning (2003) and the role of Michael Henchard in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge in 2004, for which he won the award for Best Actor in a Drama Series at the 2nd Irish Film & Television Awards.
Personal life
Hinds lives in Paris and London with his wife, the French-Vietnamese actress Hélène Patarot. They met in 1987 while in the cast of Peter Brook's production of The Mahabharata. Their daughter, Aoife Hinds (born 1991, in London), is also an actress and has appeared in Derry Girls, Normal People, and Hellraiser.
