Think Ireland is just about green fields and Guinness? Think again. From Dublin to Galway, Ireland has produced actors who’ve taken over the industry and become household names. But how did they do it? Here’s how four of the most successful actors from the Emerald Isle have built their careers.
1. Saoirse Ronan
Saoirse Ronan was born in New York City to Irish parents and raised in Carlow and Dublin. Now she is one of the most acclaimed actors of her generation. She found a love for acting after performing in local theatre productions as a child, and made her first professional TV appearance at the age of 9 in the Irish medical drama The Clinic. “Acting was something that I just took to. I liked the whole chaos of it, but also somebody being in charge of what was going to happen, and saying, ‘I need you to do this and this,’ and me saying, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ I liked the discipline that came with that,” she told the Telegraph. “And the fact that within that discipline you could be emotional and creative – I loved the dichotomy of that – the juxtaposition of those two things.” By age 13, she had already been nominated for an Academy Award for Atonement, and it was during filming that she decided “I have to keep doing this forever.”
So far, so good, because Ronan’s career has gone from strength to strength, with leading roles in films including Brooklyn, Lady Bird, and Little Women. But Ronan never trained traditionally at drama school, instead believing her knack for acting came from being an only child. “I think the whole idea of disappearing [into a character] stemmed from being an only child and spending a lot of time in my own world,” she told the Guardian. “Every kid does that, but I spent more time on my own. It was normal for me to pretend I was in a scene, and I would do it all the time.”
Ronan appeared in a production of The Crucible on Broadway, and returned to the stage in 2021 to star opposite James McArdle in the Almeida’s production of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Ronan has been nominated for four Academy Awards and seven BAFTAs, and the New York Times ranked her 10th on its 2020 list of the greatest actors of the 21st century. Her success shows that drama school isn’t always essential.
2. Ruth Negga
Born in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa but raised in the Irish county of Limerick, Ruth Negga had never acted before she signed on to study drama at Trinity College Dublin at age 18. “I didn’t know I’d be good at it, I just knew I wanted to do it,” she told the Guardian. She was right. She made a study of versatile “performers like [David] Bowie and Kate Bush and Prince – very physical performers [who] sort of subverted the idea of a fixed identity or sexuality – or anything, really. And I really enjoyed exploring the idea of shape-shifting and not being able to be pinned down.”
Early roles in Irish film and television, such as Breakfast on Pluto, Isolation, and Capital Letters, gave her exposure, but her breakthrough came with the biographical drama Loving in 2016, for which she earned an Academy Award nomination. “Loving was a very special film,” she told the Guardian. “There are films that really, really land on you and mark you, and I think this is one of those films for me.”
Negga has since moved seamlessly between stage and screen, playing a recurring role in television series such as Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and leading the cast in Hamlet at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. “It nearly killed me,” she told the Independent of her time playing the Danish prince. “If you ask anyone who’s played Hamlet, it’s completely destroying.… It cracks you open, and you feel like you’re this mass of nerves and open skin.” Unperturbed, in 2022 she returned to Shakespeare, in the role of Lady Macbeth opposite Daniel Craig on Broadway. In 2020, the Irish Times ranked her 10th on their list of the 50 best Irish actors of all time. It seems like she was right to believe in herself!
3. Paul Mescal
Paul Mescal, born in Dublin in 1996, has stormed the acting industry in recent years, both in Britain and internationally. Nowadays, he can’t walk anywhere without being noticed. “I do miss anonymity, but I don’t miss a life before getting the opportunities that come with making films,” he told GQ.
But how did he get here? Acting was compulsory at his secondary school in Maynooth, where every student was made to audition for the school musical. (In 2012 he got the title role in Phantom of the Opera). He caught the drama bug and went on the train at Trinity College Dublin’s Lir Academy, and had his professional debut in a production of The Great Gatsby at the Gate Theatre before graduating. He started to make his name on the Dublin theatre circuit, and less glamorously starred in a sausage advert in which he had to eat 15 sausages in a row.
From then on, he was known as “sausage Paul” to his friends, but he would soon be known as “Connell” to the rest of the world. In 2020, the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People was released, and Mescal was catapulted into public consciousness. “[I was] very, very lucky,” he told the Guardian of the experience.
Mescal has since moved into film, starring in Aftersun (for which he earned an Oscar nomination), God’s Creatures, and All of Us Strangers, showing a maturity well beyond his years. In 2024, he became a blockbuster star in Gladiator II. But theatre will always have an important place in his heart.
He won an Olivier Award for his role as Stanley Kowalski in the 2022 West End revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, which later transferred to Broadway and is set to return to the stage in 2027. He’s also leading a repertory company in two productions at the National Theatre. “The fun part of acting for me is doing the detective work, and putting the stepping stones in place that make it possible to get into the heavier parts of a person’s psychology,” Mescal told the Guardian about how he prepares for a role.
4. Jessie Buckley
Jessie Buckley’s path to success is a story of resilience and determination. Born in Killarney in County Kerry, she got her first acting job in the chorus of a production of Carousel in Dublin when she was just a teenager. She was launched to fame on the BBC talent show I’d Do Anything in 2008, competing to play Nancy in a West End production of Oliver!. “I was 17, I was completely blind with ignorance and excitement, but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing,” she told Woman’s Hour.
Although she finished in second place, the exposure encouraged her to follow her dreams. She got cast in Trevor Nunn’s production of A Little Night Music and, a few years later, decided to do a three-year acting course at RADA to get some formal training. “It was good to learn and try out things and fail,” she told Harper’s Bazaar of her time at drama school.
From there, Buckley steadily made her name in theatre, film, and television. Her film debut came in Beast, but her breakthrough musical film was Wild Rose in 2018. Later standout roles include Sally Bowles in the original cast of Rebecca Frecknall’s production of Cabaret, for which she won an Olivier Award; her Academy Award–nominated turn in The Lost Daughter; and a starring role in the HBO miniseries Chernobyl. In 2022, the collaborative album For All Our Days That Tear the Heart, which she made with Bernard Butler, was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. “Buckley’s career seems to have evolved into a sprawling mosaic – theatre, musicals, jazz, television, films,” writes the Guardian.
Her career is full of variety and success, but Buckley is the first to admit she’s had her fair share of setbacks too. Before getting cast on I’d Do Anything, she was rejected from several drama schools. “In the moment, it did upset me getting knocked back, but that’s life,” she told the Guardian. Her career is proof that you shouldn’t give up on chasing your dreams.