Brendan Gleeson
Brendan Gleeson is an actor, born 1955.
Brendan Gleeson is an Irish actor with a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, two British Independent Film Awards and three IFTA Awards, plus nominations for an Academy Award, three BAFTAs and five Golden Globes. In 2020 The Irish Times placed him at number eighteen on its list of Ireland's greatest film actors. He is the father of actors Domhnall and Brian Gleeson.
He is built for parts that need bulk and intelligence at the same time, which is a rarer combination than casting directors admit. Ken in In Bruges is a hitman having a crisis of conscience that he conducts almost entirely through politeness, and Gleeson plays the decency and the profession as one thing rather than two. Sergeant Gerry Boyle in The Guard runs the same trick in a comic key, a man playing dumber than he is for his own private entertainment. Father James in Calvary is the serious version, a good man absorbing a parish's worth of contempt. Colm in The Banshees of Inisherin is the cruellest, a character who has simply decided to stop, and Gleeson makes an act of pure spite look like self-preservation.
The commercial resume is enormous and mostly consists of him lending weight to somebody else's film: Hamish in Braveheart, Monk McGinn in Gangs of New York, Menelaos in Troy, Reynald in Kingdom of Heaven, Frank in 28 Days Later, Mad-Eye Moody across three Harry Potter films, Knuckles in Paddington 2 and Bill Hodges in Mr Mercedes. He is very rarely the reason a film exists and very often the best thing in it.
Movies (62)
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
- Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
- Troy (2004)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
- Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
- 28 Days Later (2002)
- Braveheart (1995)
- Mission: Impossible II (2000)
- Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)
- The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
- A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
- Gangs of New York (2002)
- Paddington 2 (2017)
- Cold Mountain (2003)
- In the Heart of the Sea (2015)
- Beowulf (2007)
- The Tailor of Panama (2001)
- In Bruges (2008)
- The Smurfs 2 (2013)
- Safe House (2012)
- Stonehearst Asylum (2014)
- Lake Placid (1999)
- The Village (2004)
- Assassin's Creed (2016)
- Live by Night (2016)
- Green Zone (2010)
- The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
- Song of the Sea (2014)
- The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012)
TV (6)
Where to start with Brendan Gleeson
In Bruges first. In Bruges is the film where everything he does well arrives at once: comic timing, moral weight, and an enormous man being gentle. It is also the best script he has been handed.
Stay in Ireland afterwards. The Guard is the funniest, Calvary is the hardest to shake, and The Banshees of Inisherin is the one that will make you argue with whoever you watched it with.
For the range, 28 Days Later hands him a supporting part and he walks off with the whole film, which is his signature move. Braveheart is where a lot of people first noticed him, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the mainstream entry point, and Paddington 2 proves he can be sweet on command without losing any menace.
The Irish films
The films that use him best are the Irish ones. In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin are both Martin McDonagh, and both give him a man who is quietly certain and completely wrong. The Guard is his brother John Michael's, and it is the funniest.
The blockbusters
Gleeson is the actor big historical films hire when they need someone the audience will believe instantly. Mad-Eye Moody is the role most viewers know him for, and Braveheart is where the type was established twenty years earlier.
The darker and stranger work
The films where he is the unsettling element. His part in 28 Days Later is small and is the emotional centre of the film anyway. Gangs of New York and A.I. are the prestige supporting work from the same period.