Dervla Kirwan (born 24 October 1971) is an Irish actress. She has received a number of accolades, including two IFTA Awards for her performances in the film Ondine (2009) and the RTÉ thriller series Smother (2021–2023) respectively.
Kirwan was born in Churchtown, Dublin, Ireland. Her father, Peter Kirwan, was an insurance broker, and her mother, Maureen O'Driscoll, was a language teacher. She is the youngest of three daughters. She attended Loreto Beaufort in Rathfarnham, Dublin, a Catholic school for girls, until the age of 16, when she was asked to leave as her career as an actress started to progress. Kirwan completed secondary school at the now-defunct non-denominational Sandymount High School in Dublin.[1]
Her paternal grandfather, Henry Kahn, was a Polish Jewish immigrant who had married her grandmother, Teresa O'Shea, a Catholic, in Ireland. In 1902, anti-Semitic judge Frederick Falkiner sentenced Kahn to a year in prison for breaking a shop window. The trial was known as a "notorious miscarriage of justice" and likely inspired a passage in James Joyce's Ulysses.[3][2]
Her breakthrough television role was appearing in the 1991 BBC Scotland production of A Time To Dance, adapted by Melvyn Bragg from his own novel, playing Bernadette Kennedy.
For 23 episodes, from 1996 to 1998, she appeared in Ballykissangel in the role of Assumpta Fitzgerald, the landlady of the village's only pub, Fitzgerald's. She reprised this role for a Comic Relief special of The Vicar of Dibley, and for a Father Ted special.
In 1999, she appeared in another BBC production, a made for TV Christmas film called The Greatest Store in the World. She played the single mother of two girls who are made homeless a few days before Christmas. Kirwan co-starred with Brian Blessed and Peter Capaldi. In 2001, she starred as Emma Rose in a BBC series Hearts and Bones alongside Sarah Parish, Amanda Holden, Hugo Speer and Damian Lewis. The show ran for two seasons. She also starred in the Sky TV series The Bombmaker as a former IRA bomb maker.
She appeared in the BBC 1 crime drama series 55 Degrees North with Don Gilet, which aired in 2004. She returned for a second season in 2005. The series was shown in the US under the title The Night Detective.
In 2009, Kirwan was in the BBC drama Moving On, where she played Laura in the episode Dress To Impress. She also guest starred in Law & Order: UK, playing the role of Beatrice McArdle.
Kirwan also appeared in the four-part BBC drama The Silence in 2010.[6] She played the role of Maggie, the warm-hearted aunt of a young deaf girl who witnessed a murder. The Silence aired in July 2010.
In 2011, Kirwan worked on Injustice a five-part psychological thriller on ITV written by Anthony Horowitz. She starred as Jane Travers, wife of main character, Will Travers played by James Purefoy.
In June 2012, Kirwan appeared on screen as Alex Demoys alongside Christopher Eccleston in the three part BBC1 drama miniseries Blackout.[7]
In 2018, Kirwan guest starred in one episode of Sky's Strike Back: Retribution. She played Rachel Sheridan who helped design Guantanamo and may have built the black site where a Jihadi leader was being held. In the same year, she also appeared in the ITV drama Strangers (originally titled White Dragon) where she played the deceased wife of the titular character Jonah Mulray, played by John Simm.[citation needed]
In 2019, she appeared as a guest star in long-running BBC series Silent Witness playing the role of pathologist Amanda Long. In 2020, she appeared on Netflix miniseries The Stranger as Corinne Price.[8]
In 2020, Kirwan began work on the Irish thriller series Smother, for RTÉ Television. Production began in early 2020 but was halted in mid-March, due to the introduction of COVID-19 restrictions in Ireland. It recommenced in August 2020 and finished in late October. The series, set and filmed in County Clare, Ireland, debuted on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player in early March 2021.[9] The series was broadcast in the UK on Alibi in autumn 2021.[10]
Stage
At the age of sixteen, Kirwan moved to London when she was cast in a play at the Bush Theatre. She won acclaim in 1988 for her performance as the factory girl Linda in A Handful of Stars, the Bush Theatre premiere of the first play in Billy Roche's Wexford Trilogy. In 1992, again at the Bush, she starred in a revival of the complete trilogy.
In 2005, she appeared on the Lyttelton stage at the National Theatre in the role of Alice in Brian Friel's Aristocrats. In 2006, she played Bertha in Exiles at the National Theatre.
In late 2014, Kirwan made her second stint at the Chichester Festival Theatre as Frankie in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, a play by Terrence McNally about the relationship between waitress, Frankie and short-order cook, Johnny played by Neil Stuke. It was warmly received by critics who gave mostly four-star reviews. It ran from November 2014 to December 2014 at the Minerva theatre.
She also starred in an independent thriller, Entity as Ruth Peacock.[20] The film premiered in 2013 at selected cinemas and DVD and won Best Horror film at the London Independent Film Festival 2013.
In 2016, she starred as the violent and cruel crime boss Ed in Branko Tomović's directorial debut Red.
In 2007, Kirwan married actor Rupert Penry-Jones[11] after a four-year engagement. They have two children. They met in 2001 while working on stage together in a West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, production of JB Priestley'sDangerous Corner, when he played Robert Caplan to her Olwen Peel. Kirwan again appeared on stage with Penry-Jones in Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 2003. They also both appeared in the television show Casanova in 2005, although they did not share any scenes.
