Paddy Considine

Patrick George Considine (born 5 September 1973) is an English actor, director, screenwriter and musician. He is known for playing antiheros in independent films. He has received two British Academy Film Awards, three Evening Standard British Film Awards, British Independent Film Awards and a Silver Lion for Best Short Film at the 2007 Venice Film Festival.
His first major onscreen appearance was in his first collaboration with filmmaker/director Shane Meadows, was in A Room for Romeo Brass (1999), and was Alfie in Paweł Pawlikowski's Last Resort (2000). Other credits include Doctor Sleep (2002), 24 Hour Party People (2002), In America (2003), My Summer of Love (2004), Dead Man's Shoes (2004), winning the 2005 Empire Award for Best British Actor, and a nomination for the BIFA for Best Actor. He wrote and directed Dog Altogether (2007), winning a BAFTA Award for Best Short Film, and its 2011 feature film adaptation Tyrannosaur which won BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. He directed and starred in Journeyman.
On stage, Considine received Olivier Awards and Tony Award nominations as Best Actor in 2018 and 2019 for his performances in The Ferryman at the Royal Court Theatre, at the Gielgud Theatre, and at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Broadway. On television, Considine has been lead in Pu-239 (2006), My Zinc Bed (2008), Red Riding (2009), Informer (2018), The Suspicions of Mr Whicher series of television films (2013–2014). Other television credits include Peaky Blinders (2016), The Outsider (2020), The Third Day (2020), and most notably he played a lead role as King Viserys I Targaryen in House of the Dragon (2022–2024).
Considine was born in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, where he still resides. He grew up with his brother and four sisters in a council estate in Winshill, a village of Burton. His father, Martin Joseph Considine, was Irish. Considine attended, among other schools, Abbot Beyne Senior School and Burton College. In 1990, he enrolled to do a National Diploma in Performing Arts at Burton College, where he first met Shane Meadows.
In 1994, Considine moved away to study photography at the University of Brighton. While there he studied under social documentarian Paul Reas, who described one project, portraits of Considine's parents in their house in Winshill, as "fucking brilliant". At one point, Considine was threatened with expulsion, but graduated with a first-class BA.
After graduating from university, Meadows cast Considine in several short films, as well as his second film, A Room for Romeo Brass (1999). Considine, in his screen debut, played the disturbed character Morell. Considine's performance in the film led to Paweł Pawlikowski casting him in his first starring role in Last Resort (2000). Considine played the lead role as love-struck misfit Alfie, for which he won the Best Actor award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. Considine increased his profile during the early to mid-2000s with supporting and starring roles in cult films such as 24 Hour Party People and In America.
In 2004, Considine starred in what was then the most significant role of his career, as Richard in Meadows' revenge film Dead Man's Shoes (2004), a film he cowrote and for which he won the Best British Actor Award at the 2005 Empire Awards. In the same year, he starred in My Summer of Love, his second film with director Pawel Pawlikowski. Both films were recognised on the award circuit, where Considine earned five nominations and two wins. The following year, Considine played Frank Thorogood (the suspected murderer of Rolling Stones co-founder Brian Jones) in Stoned (2005). It was around this time that Considine earned his reputation as a popular portrayer of cinema villains, antiheroes, and darker characters. 2005 also saw the release of Considine's second Hollywood film, Cinderella Man.
Considine appeared in the Spanish thriller Bosque de Sombras (2006). It was during the filming of this that Considine penned what later became his debut short, Dog Altogether. Considine claims that it was his co-star Gary Oldman who gave him the confidence to make the film, which led to him thanking Oldman during his BAFTA acceptance speech. In 2006, he starred in Pu-239 as Timofey Berezin, a worker at a Russian nuclear facility who gets exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. In 2007, Considine landed roles in two popular big-budget films; the third film in the Bourne Trilogy film series, The Bourne Ultimatum, in which he played newspaper reporter Simon Ross, and Hot Fuzz, in which he had his first comedic role as DS Andy Wainwright. In 2008, Considine starred in My Zinc Bed a TV film for BBC / HBO. In 2009, he starred as Peter Hunter in the Channel 4 miniseries Red Riding: 1980, based on the novels by David Peace, and another collaboration with Meadows, Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee, a film which was unscripted, adlibbed, and filmed in five days at a cost of £48,000, and which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
In 2011, Considine starred in a film adaptation of Joe Dunthorne's book Submarine, which Richard Ayoade wrote and directed. Also in 2011, Considine appeared as Porter Nash in the adaptation of the Ken Bruen novel Blitz, as well as starring as Jack Whicher in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, written by Helen Edmundson and Neil McKay. In the same year, Considine was briefly reunited with one of his A Room for Romeo Brass co-stars, BAFTA-winning actress Vicky McClure. The two shared the screen in a television advert to promote "Films for Life Season". The ad was shot over two days in Spain.
He has appeared in several music videos, most notably "God Put A Smile Upon Your Face" (2002) by Coldplay and Moloko's "Familiar Feeling" (2003), as well as the Arctic Monkeys track "Leave Before the Lights Come On" (2006), for which he wrote the video.
Considine starred in The World's End, as one of the "Five Musketeers" reattempting an "epic" pub crawl. Considine previously worked with the cast and crew on Hot Fuzz (2007). The film was released in the United Kingdom on 19 July 2013, and the United States on 23 August 2013. In August 2015, Considine confirmed that he was writing the screenplay for the film Journeyman, in which he will also star. It is an adaptation of non-fiction novel The Years of the Locust by Jon Hotten, the true story of a sociopathic boxing promoter, Fat Rick Parker, and his doomed relationship with his naive fighter, Tim Anderson. Considine is also writing a film from a ghost story called The Leaning, with plans to direct both films. He will continue to work with Shane Meadows on King of the Gypsies, a biopic of bare-knuckle fighter Bartley Gorman, whom Considine met and became friends with whilst working as a photographer. In 2015, Considine was cast along Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton in the UK zombie film in The Girl with All the Gifts, based on the 2014 novel The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey.
In April 2017, Considine made his professional stage debut in The Ferryman at the Royal Court Theatre, ahead of a transfer to the Gielgud Theatre in the West End.
The production transferred to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Broadway, beginning previews on 2 October 2018. The play, which went on to win four Tony Awards, closed on 7 July 2019. For his performance as Quinn Carney, Considine gained nominations for best actor at both the Olivier Awards and The Tony Awards. In 2020, he portrayed Mr Martin in the HBO Mini-Series The Third Day alongside Jude Law.
In August 2022, Considine began appearing as King Viserys Targaryen in the Game of Thrones series prequel House of the Dragon. Considine will portray Brendan Ingle in the upcoming biographical sports drama Giant opposite Mena Massoud as Naseem Hamed.
In 2007, Considine wrote and directed his first short film Dog Altogether, starring Peter Mullan, partially based on Considine's father. Dog Altogether it won the 2007 BAFTA award for Best Short Film, as well as a Silver Lion for Best Short Film at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, a Best British Short at the 2007 British Independent Film Awards (BIFA), and the Seattle International Film Festival Short Film Jury Award (Narrative Special Jury Prize), He later developed the short into his first feature length directorial debut Tyrannosaur with Olivia Colman and Peter Mullan resuming the story of the characters first presented in 'Dog Altogether'. Mark Kermode of BBC Radio 5 Live, hailed the film as one of the 11 Best Films of 2011. Kermode went on to award Olivia Colman Best Actress in his own Annual Kermode Awards. She tied with Tilda Swinton for We Need to Talk About Kevin.
By 18 December 2011, the film had won 21 awards from 28 nominations worldwide. The Guardian included the film in its shortlist for the First Film Award for 2012.
When the BAFTA Award nominations were announced on 17 January 2012, the omission of Olivia Colman in the Best Actress category led to global trending of both Olivia Colman and Tyrannosaur on Twitter. as well as a World Cinema Directing Award for his feature directorial debut Tyrannosaur at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
Considine's follow-up film, 2017's Journeyman was written and directed and starred Paddy alongside Jodie Whittaker and, although less well received than Tyrannosaur it had an impact within the fighting community. Former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping cited Journeyman as the key driver to his retirement from the sport.
After a short stint during college in a virtual comedy thrash group called 'Grunt', Considine and Shane Meadows formed the band She Talks To Angels (inspired by the Black Crowes song of the same name) with friends Richard Eaton, Simon Hudson, and Nick Hemming (later of The Leisure Society), with Meadows as vocalist and Considine as drummer. Considine left the band, the remaining members re-formed, calling themselves Oslo. Appearing on Jools Holland's show, whilst Considine had moved on to study photography at the University of Brighton, where he formed a new group, a Britpop band called Pedestrians. His rock band called Riding the Low, released an EP They Will Rob You of Your Gifts (2009), and an album What Happened to the Get To Know Ya? (2013).
Considine and Riding the Low got their big music break in 2014 after Tim Burgess of the Charlatans invited them to perform at his curated Tim Peaks Diner event at Festival No 6 in Portmeirion, Wales. Considine had contacted Burgess after reading his book Telling Stories, to discuss meditation. "The conversation developed and Tim generously offered to let us play at Portmeirion", Considine said. "It led to the band supporting the Charlatans at the O2 Academy in Leicester this year. I didn't get stage fright. We were ready. We did our history off-camera. We have evolved. We have got better. At first, it was raw – all we had was arrogance. We had a long way to go and we learnt our craft at all these pub gigs. We didn't expect a leg-up just because an actor is in the band."
2016 saw the band release their second full-length album Are Here to Help the Neighbourhood, recorded in Rockfield Studios and produced by Bassist Chris Slusarenko of Boston Spaceships and Guided By Voices. Considine penned the words while the band wrote the music.
Considine remains private in his personal life and once said if he ever became a celebrity, he would "disappear and go and make shoes like Daniel Day-Lewis" (a reference to Day-Lewis' sabbatical working as a shoemaker in Italy). In 2002, Considine married Shelley Insley, with whom he has been in a relationship since he was 18. They have three children. Considine still lives in his home town of Burton upon Trent with his family.
In April 2011, then in his 30s, Considine revealed that he had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.