Stephen Rea

Born on October 31, 1946 in the capital of Northern Ireland (United Kingdom), Graham Rea –his real name– is the son of a humble bus driver, Presbyterian and Republican. He studied English Philology at Queen’s University, Belfast, and later discovered his theatrical vocation.

After studying acting at the Abbey Theater School in Dublin, Rea joined the Focus Company, a company in which he had Colm Meany and Gabriel Byrne as partners , two Dublin actors predestined to be, along with himself, among the most illustrious Irish actors of end of the 20th century.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Rea combined the charts with numerous television series, such as I Didn’t Know You Cared . She made her film debut with a small role in Cry of the Banshee , which starred Vincent Price . Rea married Dolours Price, a controversial IRA member implicated in a bomb attack. Price was the mother of her two children, but later divorced her in 2003.

Rea’s professional journey changed completely after he was recruited by Neil Jordan for the filmmaker’s promising debut, Danny Boy , where he was a saxophonist who became a witness to the murder of his manager. His work was so brilliant and nuanced that Jordan would adopt him as a fetish actor. She once again counted on him as a boyfriend that the day before his wedding he receives a visit from a vengeful woman from her past, in the shocking horror film In the Company of Wolves .

Rea’s most important role under Neil Jordan was undoubtedly the lead in The Crying Game , a terrorist who begins his personal path to redemption when he befriends a black sergeant his group has kidnapped. He asks him that if he dies he goes to see his girlfriend. For his meaningful and realistic work, in a character undergoing a radical transformation, Rea earned an Oscar nomination for best actor (the film was made with the one relative to the original script), and also became an international star. .

But Rea did not manage to get a piece of his fame, despite some impeccable roles, such as that of a soldier who investigates a series of murders in Citizen X , Angie ‘s lawyer , the taciturn sailor in the interesting Between two seas Li , the photographer in Vogue en Prêt-à-Porter (from Robert Altman ‘s least interesting ), etc. Virtually only her new collaborations with Jordan are widely distributed among the general public: Interview with the Vampire ,Michael Collins , Against the Current (1997) , In Dreams (within my dreams) , The End of Romance and Breakfast on Pluto .

Rea seems more interested in the theater than the cinema, and although he shoots at a good pace, he has never stopped interpreting works like those written by his good friend Sam Shepard , with whom he filmed the western Blackthorn. Without destination , under the orders of the Spanish Mateo Gil . Throughout the 21st century he has also been the detective in V for Vendetta , the lawyer in The Good Shepherd and Cardinal Richelieu in the failed The Musketeer .