Eva Birthistle
| Eva Birthistle | |
|---|---|
 Curt Truninger and Eva Birthistle on the set of The Rendezvous in Toronto. Photo by Peter Rehak. |
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| Born | 1974 (age 37–38) Bray, Ireland |
| Occupation | Actress |
Eva Birthistle (born 1974) is an Irish actress, best known for her role in Ae Fond Kiss. She won the London Film Critics Circle British Actress of the Year Award in 2004, and has twice won the IFTA Best Actress in a Leading Role (Film) award.
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[edit] Biography
Born in Bray, Ireland, the daughter of a farmer, the family moved to Derry, Northern Ireland, when she was 14. She was raised Roman Catholic.[1] As a teenager, Eva went to Dublin to study acting at the The Gaiety School of Acting.
On 31 December 2006 she married her longtime partner, drummer for Derry band Jetplane Landing and occasional actor, Raife Burchell. The couple live in London.[citation needed]
[edit] Career
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.[citation needed]
In 2003, she appeared in the TV series Trust before starring in arguably her most prominent part so far as Roisin Hanlon in the Ken Loach movie Ae Fond Kiss... (2003-04), which won her many awards, including the 2005 London Critics Circle Film Award as "British Actress of the Year". In 2007, following objections from some Irish filmmakers and actors at being nominated for "Best British" awards, it was decided that Irish filmmakers and actors would only be eligible for awards which did not have the word "British" in the title. To that end the titles of several of the awards were amended to exclude the word British. The Attenborough Award now goes to the best British or Irish film of the year, while the two British Supporting awards (Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress) lost the word "British" from their title so that British (English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish) or Irish actors in supporting roles could be eligible.[citation needed]
She 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.
Birthistle starred as human rights lawyer Jane Lavery in the TV conspiracy drama The State Within in 2006. In late 2007 she featured as Rembrandt's wife Saskia van Uylenburg in the historical drama, Nightwatching by Peter Greenaway.
She featured in the BBC drama The Last Enemy in early 2008 playing the role of Eleanor Brooke, a junior minister. In 2009, she portrayed Jenette in the last episode -season 2- of the BBC hit series Ashes to Ashes.[2] That same year, she appeared in the independent horror film, Wake Wood.[citation needed]
She played "Annette Nicholls" in the 2010 three-part TV series Five Daughters. She appeared as Detective Superintendent Sarah Cavendish in the ninth, and final, series of Waking the Dead. In 2011 Birthistle appeared in the Sky1 TV series Strike Back: Project Dawn as Captain Kate Marshall in episodes 1-4.[citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ Applebaum, Stephen (2004-09-). "Eva Birthistle Ae Fond Kiss...". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/08/27/eva_birthistle_ae_fond_kiss_interview.shtml. Retrieved 2010-09-13.
- ^ "Ashes to Ashes Episode #2.8 (2009)". Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1376799. Retrieved 1 July 2010.
