Eva Birthistle
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Eva Birthistle (born January 1, 1974 in Bray, Co. Wicklow) is an Irish actress, best known for her role in Ae Fond Kiss.... She has won the London Film Critics Circle British Actress of the Year award for 2004, and has twice won the IFTA Best Actor in a Leading Role (Film) award.
She moved to Derry with her family when she was 14.
As a teenager, Eva went to Dublin to study acting at the The Gaiety School of Acting.
In 1995, she got her first TV role as Regina Crosbie in the serial Glenroe, one of Irish channel RTE's highest-rated shows. She stayed for three years until 1998. Other TV work followed, until she was offered her first feature film in 1997, All Souls' Day by Alan Gilsenan.
She played a variety of roles in Irish films, including Drinking Crude (1997), co-starring Colin Farrell, and TV movie Miracle at Midnight (1998), with Mia Farrow.
In 2002, Eva appeared in two dramas about the same challenging subject, Bloody Sunday: the documentary-style TV drama Bloody Sunday, starring James Nesbitt, and Sunday, written by Jimmy McGovern.
Her arguably most prominent part so far has been the female leading part (Roisin Hanlon) in the Ken Loach movie Ae Fond Kiss... (2003/4), which won her many awards, including the 2005 London Critics Circle Film Award as "British Actress of the Year".
She has also appeared in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto, Ol Parker's Imagine Me & You and Save Angel Hope by Lukas Erni in 2005 and in Brian Kirk's Middletown in 2006. Most recently, Birthistle starred as human rights lawyer Jane Lavery in the TV conspiracy drama The State Within in 2006.
In late 2007 she featured Rembrandt's wife Saskia van Uylenburg in the historical drama Nightwatching by Peter Greenaway.
She featured in the BBC drama The Last Enemy (TV series) in early 2008 playing the role of Jane Lavery, a junior minister.
