Sinéad Cusack


Sinéad Moira Cusack is an Irish stage, television and film actress. Her first acting roles were at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, before moving to London in 1975 to join the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has won the Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Awards for her performance in Sebastian Barry's Our Lady of Sligo.
Cusack has received two Tony Award nominations: once for Best Leading Actress in Much Ado About Nothing, and again for Best Featured Actress in Rock 'n' Roll. She has also received five Olivier Award nominations for As You Like , The Maid's Tragedy, The Taming of the Shrew, Our Lady of Sligo and Rock 'n' Roll. In 2020, she was listed at number 25 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.

Early life

Cusack was born Jane Moira Cusack in Dalkey, County Dublin, the daughter of actress Maureen Cusack and actor Cyril Cusack. She is the sister of actresses Sorcha Cusack, Niamh Cusack, and half-sister to Catherine Cusack. Her father was born in South Africa, to an Irish father and an English mother, and had worked with Micheál Mac Liammóir at Dublin's Gate Theatre.

Career

Theatre

Her first acting roles were at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In 1975, she moved to London and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company starring in Dion Boucicault's London Assurance in the West End. Cusack's work with the RSC continued with an award-winning performance as Celia in As You Like It which included the Clarence Derwent Award and her first Olivier Award nomination. She secured a second Olivier Award nomination for her performance in The Maid's Tragedy by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in 1981, followed two years later with a third Olivier Award nomination as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew.
She made her Broadway debut in 1984 performing in repertory with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Starring opposite Derek Jacobi, she played Roxane in Anthony Burgess' translation of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and Beatrice in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Terry Hands. Much Ado was first produced at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1982–83, then moved to London's Barbican Theatre for the 1983–1984 season where it was joined by Cyrano, before both plays transferred to New York's Gershwin Theatre from October 1984 to January 1985, for which Cusack received a Tony Award nomination for her performance as Beatrice, and costar Derek Jacobi won the award for his Benedick. The production of Cyrano de Bergerac was later filmed in 1985.
During this period, Cusack and her husband, Jeremy Irons, appeared in a Shakespeare Winter's Eve, a major fundraiser for the Riverside Shakespeare Company in New York, along with other members of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Following the Broadway run, the plays toured the US, making stops in Washington DC and Los Angeles. Cusack's connection with the Royal Shakespeare Company continued with a series of leading roles include Portia in The Merchant of Venice opposite David Suchet, Lady Macbeth opposite Jonathan Pryce in Macbeth and Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra in Stratford-upon-Avon and at London's Haymarket Theatre in the West End.
In 1990, Cusack, in the role of Masha, joined two of her sisters, Niamh and Sorcha, and her father, Cyril Cusack for a well-received production of Anton Chekhov's tragi-comedy The Three Sisters in a new version by Frank McGuinness, directed by Adrian Noble at the Gate Theatre, Dublin before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre in London. The production also featured Niamh's husband Finbar Lynch as Solenyi and Lesley Manville as Natasha. The production won the three real-life sisters the Irish Life Award in 1992.
One of her best known stage roles was Our Lady of Sligo by Sebastian Barry in 1998, in which she played the principal role of Mai O'Hara in performances in Ireland, on Broadway and at the National Theatre. For this she won the 1998 Evening Standard Theatre Awards for Best Actress, the 1998 Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress and her fourth Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2006/7 she starred with Rufus Sewell in Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll at the Royal Court Theatre in London which transferred to the West End and Broadway, winning Cusack her fifth Olivier Award nomination and her second Tony Award nomination.
In 2015, Cusack returned to Ireland's Abbey Theatre, where she began her theatre career. She appeared in the world première of Mark O'Rowe's play Our Few And Evil Days, acting opposite long-time collaborator Ciarán Hinds. She won the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Actress.

Film and television

Cusack starred with Peter Sellers in the film Hoffman. She guest starred in an episode of The Persuaders!, a TV series starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, as Jenny Lindley, a wealthy heiress who suspects that a man claiming to be her dead brother is in fact an impostor. In 1975 she made three appearances in the TV series Quiller as the character 'Roz'.
Cusack and her husband Jeremy Irons appeared together in the film Waterland, in a television adaptation of Christopher Hampton's Tales from Hollywood, and again in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty. Further film work includes starring roles in the films V for Vendetta and Eastern Promises, a thriller directed by David Cronenberg. Her performance in The Tiger's Tail won her a first IFTA Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She won the IFTA Award for her performance in The Sea, adapted from the novel by John Banville. Cusack was nominated once more for an IFTA Award for her performance in John Boorman's drama film Queen and Country, which premièred at the Cannes Film Festival.
Further starring roles include lead roles in Oliver's Travels, Have Your Cake And Eat It for which she won the RTS Award for Best Actress and Frank McGuinness's The Hen House for BBC Television. She starred in the title role of George du Maurier's Trilby, in an adaptation for the BBC's Play of the Month, with Alan Badel as Svengali. She also starred in the BBC mini-series North and South as Mrs. Thornton. Cusack starred in the BBC sitcom Home Again and appeared in the TV series Camelot, which ran for one season. Cusack had featured roles in the mini-series The Deep and the series Marcella, an eight-episode murder mystery.

Publications

Along with other actresses, including Paola Dionisotti, Fiona Shaw, Juliet Stevenson and Harriet Walter, Cusack contributed to a book by Carol Rutter called Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare's Women Today. The book analysed modern acting interpretations of female Shakespearean roles.

Personal life

Cusack married British actor Jeremy Irons in 1978, and they have two sons, Samuel James, and Maximilian Paul.
Prior to marrying Irons, Cusack gave birth to a son in 1967 and placed the boy for adoption. In 2007, a journalist for the Irish Sunday Independent, Daniel McConnell, revealed that Cusack was the mother of left-wing general election candidate and now member of Irish parliament Richard Boyd Barrett. The two have since been reunited. Cusack campaigned for Boyd Barrett when he stood unsuccessfully in Ireland's 2007 general election as the People Before Profit Alliance's candidate for Dún Laoghaire constituency. She also joined him in the count centre as he awaited the outcome of the 2011 general election, at which he was elected to Dáil Éireann. In May 2013, Boyd Barrett revealed that theatre director Vincent Dowling was his biological father.
Cusack is a patron of the Burma Campaign UK, the London-based group campaigning for human rights and democracy in Burma.
In 1998, Cusack was named, along with her husband, in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the British Labour Party. In August 2010, Cusack signed the "Irish artists' pledge to boycott Israel" initiated by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Filmography