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 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.
Cusack married British actor Jeremy Irons in 1978, and together they have two sons:
Samuel James, and Maximilian Paul.
Prior to her marriage she had given birth to another son, the Irish member of parliament
Richard Boyd Barrett, whom she put up for adoption.
They have since been reunited, and Cusack has supported him in his political campaigns.
Along with her husband, Cusack was named in a list of the biggest private financial donors
to the British Labour Party in 1998.
Early life Cusack was born Jane Moira Cusack in Dalkey,
County Dublin, the daughter of Mary Margaret "Maureen" Kiely and actor Cyril James 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 Her first acting roles were at the Abbey Theatre
in Dublin.
In 1970, she starred with Peter Sellers in the film Hoffman.
In 1971, she guest starred in an episode of The Persuaders!
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 moved to London and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Also in 1975 she made three appearances in the TV series Quiller as the character 'Roz'.
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.
The production of Cyrano de Bergerac was later filmed in 1985.
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 came 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 Jacobi won the award for his Benedick.
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.
She appeared in the 1992 film adaptation of Graham Swift's novel Waterland, alongside
her husband Jeremy Irons.
One of her best known stage roles was Our Lady of Sligo in 1998, in which she played
the principal role of Mai O'Hara in performances in Ireland, on Broadway and at the National
Theatre.
She also starred in the 2004 BBC miniseries North and South in a scene-stealing role as
Mrs. Thornton, and in the 2006 film V for Vendetta.
She was awarded the 1998 Evening Standard Award for Best Actress and the 1998 Critics'
Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress.
In 2006, she starred in the BBC sitcom Home Again.
In 2011, she joined the main cast of the TV series Camelot, which ran for one season.
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 She 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 1968 and placed the child for
adoption.
In 2007, the Sunday Independent reporter Daniel McConnell revealed that Cusack was the mother
of left-wing general election candidate and now member of 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.
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
References
External links Sinéad Cusack at the Internet Movie Database
Sinéad Cusack at the Internet Broadway Database JeremyIrons.Org: The Unofficial Site
jeremyirons.net: The Authoritative Website FilmReference.com's page on Sinead Cusack's
filmography