James Nesbitt

About
James Nesbitt portrays Tony Hughes in The Missing.

Background
Born and raised in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, James moved to London to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama. After graduating, he embarked on a career in stage before making a successful film debut as talent agent ‘Fintan O’Donnell’ in Hear My Song (1991).

James later worked with celebrated British director Michael Winterbottom in Go Now (1995), Jude (1996) and Welcome to Saravejo (1997), and starred in the film Waking Ned Devine (1998) as pig farmer ‘Pig Finn’, a role that brought him international recognition.

He went on to star in Lucky Break (2001), and played the lead role of activist ‘Ivan Cooper’ in Paul Greengrass’s critically acclaimed film Bloody Sunday (2002). The film won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. James’s performance also earned him a BAFTA award nomination and the Best Actor Award at both the British Independent Film Awards and the Stockholm Film Festival.

James’s other film credits include roles in Danny Boyle’s film Millions (2004) and in Woody Allen’s 2005 film Match Point. In 2010 he starred in Matching Jack and appeared alongside Martin Sheen in Emilio Estevez’s The Way. More recently, he appeared in Coriolanus (2011), directed by Ralph Fiennes and co-starring Gerard Butler. He also appeared as ‘Bolfur’ Peter Jackson’s trilogy, The Hobbit (2012-14).

James has long been a familiar face to British television, appearing as’ Leo McGarvey’ in Ballykissangel (1996-8) and starring in Playing the Field (1998-9). His breakthrough television role, however, came when he played ‘Adam Williams’ in the ground-breaking Cold Feet (1997-2003) appearing alongside Helen Baxendale. James’s performance in Cold Feet earned him a British Comedy Award and a UK National Television Award.

He also played the title role of ‘Tommy Murphy’ in Murphy’s Law, and lead character ‘Nick’ in a BBC adaptation of The Millers Tale (2003), the second of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In 2004, he played the lead in two television films Passer By, directed by David Morrissey and written by Tony Marchant, and Wall of Silence. In 2008 he played Pontius Pilate in the BBC mini-series The Passion and a year later starred with Liam Neeson in BBC Film’s Five Minutes of Heaven. He also starred in the BAFTA Award-winning series Occupation (2009) and in the feature length pilot of Danny Boyle’s Babylon, which will return to Channel 4 as a six-part series in late 2014.