David Wilmot
David Wilmot is an actor.
Wilmot has been on Irish screens since at least 1990, when he turns up as a boy at a dance in The Field. He was a Squad Youth in Michael Collins in 1996, Dessie in The Devil's Own in 1997, an assassin in The General in 1998, Oscar in Intermission in 2003. No birth year is recorded for him here, which is oddly fitting for an actor who has spent more than three decades being the third or fourth name on a call sheet and being better than that position implies.
His King Arthur credit in 2004 reads, in full, Woad Killed by Lancelot, which is a fair summary of one entire phase of the career. The other phase is much better: Liam O'Leary in The Guard, Father Leary in Calvary, Boyle in '71, Hector in Calm with Horses, Sean Ryan in The Wonder, Nikolai in Anna Karenina. He specialises in men who are completely at ease in a room they have no business being in, and he can hold a scene without raising his voice or asking you for anything.
Television has used him hardest lately: Captain Connor in The Alienist, Clark Thompson in Station Eleven, Edward Burgess in Industry, Seamus Gallagher in Bodkin, Donald Artherton in Ripper Street, Bonnie Champion in House of Guinness. He is John in Hamnet in 2025 and Jerry in Hokum in 2026, so the run continues without any sign of slowing.
Movies (26)
- Hokum (2026)
- Hamnet (2025)
- Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)
- King Arthur (2004)
- Anna Karenina (2012)
- The Devil's Own (1997)
- '71 (2014)
- The Guard (2011)
- Breathe (2017)
- The Wonder (2022)
- Calvary (2014)
- The Field (1990)
- Laws of Attraction (2004)
- Michael Collins (1996)
- War on Everyone (2016)
- Calm with Horses (2020)
- Ordinary Love (2019)
- Little Joe (2019)
- Shadow Dancer (2012)
- Intermission (2003)
- Six Shooter (2004)
- The General (1998)
- Rat (2000)
- Dorothy Mills (2008)
- The Treaty (1991)
- Lies We Tell (2023)
TV (10)
Where to start with David Wilmot
Pick The Guard first. It is the best film on this list and his Liam O'Leary is exactly the kind of supporting turn he does better than almost anyone, specific down to the last vowel.
Calvary is the heavier companion, an Irish drama with a genuinely unusual moral shape, and he is one of several very good actors in it. For range, '71 is the tense one and Calm with Horses is the bleak one, and both are worth your time regardless of him.
On television, Station Eleven is the best thing he has been in and gives him real weight to carry, Bodkin is the recent and lighter option, and The Alienist is the handsome period procedural. Hamnet is the newest and the highest-profile.