Bio
Stephen Rea is a Northern Irish actor best known for his role as Fergus in the 1992 feature film The Crying Game, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Rea is originally from Ireland and attended the Queen's University of Belfast, where he studied English. He trained for the stage at the Abbey School in Dublin and in the late 1970s he acted alongside Gabriel Byrne in the Focus Company.
In 1980 he co-founded the Field Day Theatre with playwright Brian Friel.
Rea spent many years doing stage in Britain and Ireland and appeared in several television productions. His first notable performance on the big screen was in Angel, but in 1992 he gained international attention when he received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in The Crying Game.
Other films that have followed include Interview with the Vampire, Michael Collins and The Butcher Boy.
Stephen Rea continues to do work on the small screen, having played in HBO's Crime of the Century depicting the accused Lindbergh baby kidnapper, Bruno Richard Hauptman.