Rise to Fame
He spent most of his thirties teaching Irish and English at a north Dublin secondary school. Not the backstory you'd expect. His wife Mary pushed him toward full-time acting, which he didn't commit to until 1991. Braveheart (1995) was the break. The General (1998), where he played Irish gangster Martin Cahill, confirmed there was nothing accidental about any of it: he wasn't filling out ensemble casts, he was anchoring them.
In the Spotlight
His first Oscar nomination came at 67, for The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), playing a folk musician who decides his old friend is too dull for his company. The industry had finally caught up to what Irish audiences knew for thirty years. He lost to Ke Huy Quan, which nobody held against him. West End debut at 70, film with Claire Foy after that. He's not chasing the career. The career's chasing him.
Side Notes
He plays fiddle at traditional sessions in Dublin pubs between shoots, which makes sense for a man who spent ten years teaching the Irish language to teenagers. He's fluent in Irish Gaelic, and it shows in his choices: he picks projects for the work, not the profile. All four sons work in the arts: Domhnall and Brian as actors, Fergus as a musician, and Rúairí as a novelist and playwright. The Gleesons are something like an Irish dynasty without the Hollywood ambitions.