Rise to Fame
Eleven years as an electrician, three of them in Zimbabwe maintaining safari park equipment, is an odd resume for a television star. He spotted an acting class ad in The Irish Times, enrolled on a whim, and didn't land his first screen role until he was 30. The gradual climb through War of the Buttons, Jude, and Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley set him up for Game of Thrones, where he played Davos Seaworth across seven seasons. The Onion Knight was the rare GoT character who got to live.
In the Spotlight
The GoT reunion tour continues on Netflix. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss cast him as Thomas Wade in 3 Body Problem (2024), the intelligence operative who approaches an alien extinction threat like someone managing a mildly inconvenient logistics problem. He described the character as 'probably the least human' of the cast, which he found unsettling. An IFTA nomination followed. The show is confirmed for multiple seasons, and Benioff-Weiss aren't done with him yet.
Side Notes
He almost became the first non-British actor to play the Doctor on Doctor Who in 1996. Film producer David Puttnam, who knew him from War of the Buttons, recommended him to executive producer Philip Segal, who considered him seriously, and the role went to Paul McGann instead. Years later, when Game of Thrones writers proposed a Season 7 subplot where Davos developed romantic feelings for a young woman, he reportedly refused outright. His reasoning: given Davos's almost paternal relationship with Shireen Baratheon and Lyanna Mormont, the subplot would've destroyed years of audience goodwill. The producers dropped it.