Ciarán Hinds Biography

Ciarán Hinds was born in Belfast, Ireland to a doctor father and a mother who dabbled in amateur theater. As the only son in a family of five children, his father hoped Ciarán would follow in his footsteps, but his mother's influence eventually won out. Hinds trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, then landed his first job at the Glasgow Citizens' Theater, where he had the opportunity to play various roles over the next several years, including the lead in the classic play Arsenic and Old Lace.

Ciarán made his feature film debut in Excaliber (1981), filmed in Ireland. His next movie wasn't for several years, when he landed the role of Cory in The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989), starring Helen Mirren. Hinds made a smooth transition into television with a role in the British mini-series The Mahabharata (1989). For the next few years, he worked steadily in British television, opposite stars such as Kathy Bates and Colin Firth in Hostages (1993) and Helene Bonham Carter in A Dark Adapted Eye (1994). Hinds returned to film with a role in A Circle of Friends (1995), a U.S./U.K. co-production starring Chris O'Donnell and Minnie Driver. He had the opportunity to work alongside Julia Roberts and John Malkovich in Mary Reilly (1996), filmed in Scotland and England, then accepted the plum role of Mr. Rochester in A&E's version of Jane Eyre (1997).

Other career highlights include Oscar and Lucinda (1997) starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett, The Weight of Water (2002) with Sean Penn, The Sum of All Fears (2002) starring Morgan Freeman, The Road to Perdition (2002) starring Tom Hanks, The Phantom of the Opera (2004), Steven Spielberg's Munich (2005) and the critically-acclaimed Life During Wartime (2010). In recent years, Hinds continued to star in a string of projects, including The Woman in Black with Daniel Radcliffe, John Carter with Taylor Kitsch, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance alongside Nicolas Cage, and the thriller Closed Circuit (2013), starring Eric Bana. He lent his voice to the animated blockbuster Frozen (2013), and appeared in Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them (2014), The Driftless Area (2015), Hitman: Agent 47 (2015), Bleed for This (2016), Silence (2017) and Justice League (2017).

Ciarán appeared in Red Sparrow(2018) with Jennifer Lawrence, followed by the biographical drama First Man(2018), alongside Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy.

In 2010, Ciarán received a Career Achievement Award at the Dublin International Film Festival.

In 2022, Ciarán received his first Academy Award nomination for his role as Pop in Belfast (2021), directed by Kenneth Branagh.

Ciarán has a daughter, Aoife, with his partner Héléne Patarot, a French-Vietnamese actress. Although he travels frequently to the United States to make films, his permanent home is in Paris.