Richard Dormer

Richard Dormer
Richard Dormer in The Gentlemen's Tea-Drinking Society (2009)
Born	(1969-11-11) 11 November 1969 Lisburn, Northern Ireland
Occupation	actor, playwright
Years active	1991–present

Richard Dormer (born 11 November 1969) is an actor, playwright and screenwriter.

He was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. After to being accepted to the Royal College of Art Richard accepted a scholarship at the RADA school of acting in London. After living and working in London, he returned to Northern Ireland. He lives in Belfast and is married to director Rachel O'Riordan.^[1]

Theatre

Dormer gained notice following his performance as Northern Irish Snooker star, Alex Higgins in Hurricane in 2003, which he wrote and starred in. The production received praise from critics and even from Higgins himself and saw Richard win The Stage award for best actor in 2003.^[2][3][4] In 2004 Richard won the Irish Times Best Actor Award for his performance in Frank McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme and in 2005 completed a season with Sir Peter Hall at the Theatre Royal and performed Bath in the George Bernard Shaw play, You Can Never Tell, William Shakespeare's, Much Ado About Nothing, Noël Coward's play, Private Lives, and in a production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.^[5]

Since, Dormer has written a number of plays including The Half and Gentleman's Tea Drinking Society which were produced through Belfast's Ransom theatre company. In 2012 Dormer was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre to write a production, set in Brooklyn in the summer of 1969, Dormer's Drum Belly gives an insight into the dark edgy underworld of New York’s Irish gangsters which opened April 2013 to mainly positive reviews and was published by Bloomsbury Publishing^[6][7][8][9] Richard has also provided the voices for over twenty BBC Radio 4 plays, documentaries and advertising campaigns.^[10]

Film

Following a run of film castings playing secondary characters, he was cast as the lead in the 2012 Good Vibrations which tells the story of Northern Ireland personality and punk rock visionary Terri Hooley. The film premièred at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and was awarded 'best film' at the Galway film awards. The film was well received by critics gaining consistent reviews, most of which highlighted Dormer's performance as a strength.^{[11][12][13][14]} Richard's portrayal of Terri Hooley saw him nominated in the 'best actor' award in the 2013 Irish Film & Television Awards.

Television

Dormer has become a well known television actor, more recently playing key roles in the Cinemax drama series Hunted and BBC One's Hidden.^[15][16] 2012 also saw Dormer taking over the role of Lord Beric Dondarrion, known as the "Lightning Lord", the leader of the "Brotherhood Without Banners" for Season 3 of HBO series Game of Thrones.^[17]

Richard can be heard as the voince of the 'Dad' character on children's animation Driftwood Bay. The series is set to air in May on Nick Jr. and will also air on RTE in Ireland, Sprout in US, ABC Australia, Kika in Germany, MTV in Finland, NRK in Norway, SVT in Sweden, and HOP! in Israel later this year. Broadcasters in Australia and the US are keeping the original voices to the series.^[18]

In 2014 Richard began filming on Sky Atlantic's Fortitude. Described as 'their most ambitious project to date', Richard takes up the role of Sheriff Dan Anderssen and stars alongside Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, Christopher Eccleston and Sofie Grabol.^[19] Fortitude is due to air late 2014.^[20]

Filmography

References

External links

• Richard Dormer at the Internet Movie Database