Early life

Dillane was born in Kensington to an English mother, Bridget (née Curwen), and an Australian surgeon father, Dr John Dillane. The eldest of his siblings (his younger brother Richard is also an actor), he grew up in Beckenham, Kent.

At school Dillane began performing in end-of-term plays and had "a certain facility" for funny accents. He often found himself in women's roles, which he says "wasn’t good for my confused adolescent psyche", but also recalls a part in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as being particularly memorable, noting that shouting "Fire!" as Rosencrantz while pointing at the audience was "a very thrilling thing to be able to do."

He studied history and politics at the University of Exeter, concentrating on the Russian Revolution, and afterward became a journalist for the Croydon Advertiser. Unhappy in his career, he read one day how actor Trevor Eve gave up architecture for acting; this, along with reading Hamlet and Peter Brook's The Empty Space back-to-back, made him "light up inside somewhere" and spurred him to enter the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School at 25. During his early acting career, he was known as Stephen Dillon but reverted to his birth name in the 1990s.

Career

Dillane is a distinguished theatre actor; his notable roles include Archer in The Beaux' Stratagem (Royal National Theatre, 1989), Prior Walter in Angels in America (1993), Hamlet (1994), Clov in Samuel Beckett's Endgame (1996), Uncle Vanya (1998), Henry in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing (for which he won a Tony Award in 2000), The Coast of Utopia (2002), and a one-man version of Macbeth (2005). He has also performed T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets in London and New York City, and was seen in the 2010 Bridge Project's productions of The Tempest and As You Like It.

Dillane also portrayed Horatio in the 1990 film adaptation of Hamlet. He played Michael Henderson in Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), a character based on British journalist Michael Nicholson, and the impatient and easily agitated Harker in Spy Game (2001).

Dillane is also known for his portrayal of Leonard Woolf in The Hours (2002), legendary English professional golfer Harry Vardon in The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005) and Glen Foy in the Goal! trilogy. He also starred in John Adams as Thomas Jefferson.

In recent years Dillane has worked mainly in television, professing himself to be "a little lost on stage at the moment." He joined the cast of Game of Thrones in 2011 as Stannis Baratheon, a major contender for the throne of the fictional realm of Westeros. While admitting he had not read the books on which the popular series is based, he commented that the show's appeal was due to "the storytelling, the extraordinary world that’s created and the way it reflects our actual world - a naked, ruthless pursuit of power in all its forms." In 2012 he also played Rupert Keel, head of the private security agency Byzantium, in the BBC drama series Hunted. The following year he went on to take the male lead, opposite Clémence Poésy, in the crime drama series The Tunnel, an Anglo-French remake of the Scandinavian The Bridge. Dillane, who had not seen the original series, plays Karl Roebuck, the laid-back, experienced British detective to Poésy's humourless French counterpart. His performance won him an International Emmy Award for Best Actor. A second series of the drama, titled The Tunnel: Sabotage, completed shooting in 2015 and was aired in April 2016 from Sky Atlantic. Dillane reprises his role alongside Poésy in a new case involving a deadly airliner crash in the English Channel.

Besides television, Dillane recently starred in the 2012 British independent film Papadopoulos & Sons as successful entrepreneur Harry Papadopoulos, who rediscovers his life after being forced to start again from nothing in the wake of a banking crisis. His son, Frank Dillane, plays his son in the film. That same year he also had roles in the films Zero Dark Thirty and Twenty8k.

Offscreen, the actor in 2014 collaborated with visual artist Tacita Dean for the Sydney Biennale and Carriageworks in a project called Event for a Stage. The work, performed live and later adapted for radio broadcast and film, explored the process of filmmaking and the "concept of artifice on the stage" through a single actor, Dillane. The performance encompassed readings from texts as well as his personal reflections on acting, theatre, and family. 2015 saw Dillane making other brief returns to stage including a reprise of his reading of Four Quartets in London and a one-off appearance in Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree at the National Theatre.

In 2016, besides appearing in the second series of The Tunnel, Dillane is set to return to the Donmar Warehouse for a revival of Brian Friel's Faith Healer. He had previously performed in the National Theatre debut of the playwright's Dancing at Lughnasa in 1990. In addition, he will have a role as artist Graham Sutherland in The Crown, Netflix's TV series about British monarch Elizabeth II. Dillane has also joined the cast of Haifaa Al-Mansour's upcoming film A Storm in the Stars, in which he will portray writer William Godwin, the father of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley.

Personal life

Dillane has two sons with actor-director Naomi Wirthner: Seamus and actor Frank Dillane, who is best known for playing the teenage Voldemort in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Nick Clark on AMC's Fear The Walking Dead.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1988	Business as Usual	Mr. Dunlop
1990	Hamlet	Horatio
1996	Two If by Sea	Evan Marsh	Alternate title: Stolen Hearts
1997	Welcome to Sarajevo	Michael Henderson
1997	Firelight	Charles Godwin
1997	Déjà Vu	Sean
1998	Love and Rage	Dr. Croly
1999	The Darkest Light	Tom
2000	Ordinary Decent Criminal	Noel Quigley
2001	Spy Game	Charles Harker
2001	The Parole Officer	Inspector Burton
2002	The Truth About Charlie	Charlie
2002	The Hours	Leonard Woolf
2003	The Gathering	Simon Kirkman
2004	King Arthur	Merlin
2004	Haven	Mr. Allen
2005	The Greatest Game Ever Played	Harry Vardon
2005	Goal!	Glen Foy
2005	Nine Lives	Martin
2006	Klimt	Secretary
2007	Goal! 2: Living the Dream...	Glen Foy
2007	Fugitive Pieces	Jakob Beer
2007	Savage Grace	Brooks Baekeland
2008	Freakdog	Doctor Harris	Original title: Red Mist
2009	44 Inch Chest	Mal
2009	Storm	Keith Haywood
2011	Perfect Sense	Stephen Montgomery
2012	Papadopoulos & Sons	Harry Papadopoulos
2012	Twenty8k	DCI Edward Stone
2012	Zero Dark Thirty	National Security Adviser
2017	A Storm in the Stars	William Godwin	Filming

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1985	Remington Steele	Bradford Galt	Episode: "Steel Searching: Part 1"
1987	The Secret Garden	Captain Lennox	Television film
1988	The One Game	Nicholas Thorne
1988	Christabel	Peter Bielenberg
1988	The Face of Trespass	Gray Harston	Television film; alternate title: An Affair in Mind
1989	The Yellow Wallpaper	John	Television film
1991	Boon	Paul Lyle	Episode: "Help Me Make It Through the Night"
1991	Ruth Rendell Mysteries	Philip Blackstock	Episode: "Achilles Heel"
1991	Heading Home	Leonard Meopham	Television film
1992	Frankie's House	Antony Strickland	Television film
1992	Hostages	Chris Pearson	Television film
1993	Soldier Soldier	Captain Mike Davidson	Episode: "Hard Knocks"
1994	The Rector's Wife	Jonathan Byrne	3 episodes
1995	The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd	Mr. Blackmore	Play for television
1998	Kings in Grass Castles	Patsy	Television film
2000	Anna Karenina	Karenin
2001	The Cazalets	Edward Cazalet
2008	John Adams	Thomas Jefferson	6 episodes
2008	The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall	Anthony Hurndall	Television film
2008	God on Trial	Schmidt	Television film
2010	Agatha Christie's Marple	Inspector Finch	Episode: "The Secret of Chimneys"
2012	Eternal Law	Carl	2 episodes
2012	Hunted	Rupert Keel
2012	Secret State	Paul J. Clark
2012	Murder: Joint Enterprise	Arlo Raglin	Television single drama
2012-15	Game of Thrones	Stannis Baratheon	24 episodes
2013	A Touch of Cloth	Macratty	2 episodes
2013-present	The Tunnel	Karl Roebuck
2016	The Crown	Graham Sutherland	Unknown episodes

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Work	Result
1998	AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Television Drama	Kings in Grass Castles	Won
1999	Evening Standard Award for Best Actor	The Real Thing	Won
2000	Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor	The Real Thing	Nominated
2000	Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play	The Real Thing	Nominated
2000	Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play	The Real Thing	Won
2000	Theatre World Award	The Real Thing	Won
2000	Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play	The Real Thing	Won
2003	Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Acting Ensemble	The Hours	Nominated
2003	Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Acting Ensemble	The Hours	Nominated
2003	Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture	The Hours	Nominated
2003	Gold Derby Film Award for Best Ensemble Cast	The Hours	Won
2004	London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Supporting Actor of the Year	The Hours	Nominated
2005	Gotham Award for Best Ensemble Cast	Nine Lives	Nominated
2008	Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie	John Adams	Nominated
2009	British Academy Television Award for Best Actor	The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall	Won
2010	San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Performance by an Ensemble	44 Inch Chest	Won
2014	Royal Television Society Programme Award for Best Male Actor	The Tunnel	Nominated
2014	International Emmy Award for Best Actor	The Tunnel	Won
2015	Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones	Nominated

[ Source: Wikipedia ]