Richard Dillane

Richard Dillane (born 1964) is an English actor.

He appears in Soldier Soldier (1995), Cold Feet (2000), Space Race (2005), Tristan & Isolde (2006), Spooks (2007), Casualty (2008-2009), Oranges and Sunshine (2010), Doctor Who (2011), Argo (2012), Dead in Tombstone (2013), Wolf Hall (2015), Peaky Blinders and Poldark (2016), Giri/Haji (2019), Young Wallander (2020),The Crown and Andor (2022).

Dillane is from Kent, and grew up near London with his brother Stephen (also an actor).

Their mother is English and their father was born in Australia to Irish parents.

He took a philosophy degree at Manchester University, and lived in Australia for ten years, working in white-water rafting as a guide, also as an actor and director.

In 2000, he was the 1st Duke of Suffolk in the Olivier Award-winning Michael Boyd productions of Henry VI parts 1, 2 and 3 in Stratford, London and Michigan.

He played Hamlet in Perth, Australia, directed by Ray Omodei.

He is also a regular radio actor and voice-over artist.

His essay 'Making Sense of "To be, or not to be"', about Hamlet's soliloquy, was published in Shakespeare and Montaigne.

They were married in 2005, and had three children, all boys, Austin, Murray and Ray.

Dillane's other film work includes The Dark Knight (as Acting Commissioner), Mindscape with Mark Strong, The Dinosaur Project, The Edge of Love, The Jacket, Tristan & Isolde (2006), and as Cole Porter's last lover Bill Wrather (a composite character) in Irwin Winkler's biopic De-Lovely, which starred Kevin Kline.

Recent television work includes Giri/Haji, The Last Kingdom, Peaky Blinders, Counterpart, Outlander, The Last Post, and Star Wars: Andor.

Prior to this, he played the captain of the shape-changing justice robot Teselecta in two episodes of Doctor Who ("Let's Kill Hitler" and "The Wedding of River Song"), rogue spy John Richardson in Spooks (2007), Australian conman Graham Poole in Hustle, photographer and old flame Miles Brodie in Cold Feet, posh drug addict Theodore Platt in the first episode of Lewis and the relationship counsellor Ben in Men Behaving Badly, as well as regular characters Sean Anderson in Casualty, and Australian sergeant Brad Connor in the ITV series Soldier Soldier.

On stage, Dillane has performed at the National Theatre of Great Britain in London and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon.

He played British intelligence agent Peter Nicholls in Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning 2012 political thriller Argo, and Merv Humphreys, husband of Margaret Humphreys (played by Emily Watson) in Jim Loach's fact-based movie Oranges and Sunshine.

He was Wernher von Braun in the BBC television docudrama Space Race, Nero in Howard Brenton's play Paul at the National Theatre of Great Britain and appeared several times as Stephen Maturin in the BBC radio adaptations of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey–Maturin novels and Peter Guillam in three John le Carré adaptations.

In 2015, he played Duke of Suffolk in the BBC TV series Wolf Hall, and in 2016 he appeared in the lead role of DCI Michael Waite in a double episode of the BBC TV series Silent Witness.

He is married to Scottish actress Jayne McKenna, and they live in Brighton, East Sussex (in 2015).

In 2020, he appears in a lead role of the Netflix series Young Wallander, based on the character Kurt Wallander created by novelist Henning Mankell.