declan mcalarney

full name: declan rory mcalarney date of birth: 25 february 1982 + 35 hometown: dublin, ireland current residence: spitalfields, london occupation: actor status: single

Declan Rory McAlarney (born 25 February 1982) is an Irish actor of stage and screen and the first, and thus far only, millennial male to have won an acting Oscar.

McAlarney studied acting at Trinity College Dublin before beginning his acting career full-time in Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette. He went on to leading roles in Control (2007), and One Day (2011) along with the television show Him & Her (2010 – 13). He also starred in the stage productions of Red (2009-10) and Richard II (2011-12). The former won him the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.

McAlarney is best known for his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014), for which he won the Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors’ Guild Award for Best Actor. In 2016, he portrayed American soldier Desmond T. Doss, earning his second nominations for the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, BAFTA and SAG Award for Best Actor.

Early Life McAlarney was born in Dublin, Ireland to James and Maureen McAlarney (née McCarrick). His middle name is after his maternal grandfather Ruairí McCarrick.

His father is a butcher with the Tesco chain of supermarkets, while his mother is a retired First and Second Class teacher. McAlarney's mother was passionate about the children growing up in speaking the Irish language beyond the classroom, with Declan and his siblings attending tutoring and Irish language camps in their youth. He has said that he mainly uses the language now amongst family and friends who speak it. McAlarney has a younger sister Kailee, also a teacher, and a younger brother Patrick, a solictor.

McAlarney was raised in the Beaumont section of north Dublin, where he attended St. Vincent's CBS Primary school in Glasnevin. At 9, he was enrolled in classes at The Gaeity School of Acting, the national theatre school of Ireland. As a teen, the family moved to Fairview, also in north Dublin, where his parents still currently reside. McAlarney finished his education at all-boys Belvedere College SJ and Trinity College Dublin.

Career McAlarney would only have one professional credit while studying, voicing John Barker in the 2002 BBC Radio 4 presentation of The Angry Brigade. After a few small roles in television upon graduating, there would come a two year period of auditioning but not quite finding anything, in which he worked a series of part-time jobs and truly considered if maybe as much as acting was what was his passion if it was a bit of a pipe dream.

After a chance lucky audition in 2006, McAlarney moved to London full time. His first, smaller breakthrough would be as Ian Curtis in the biopic Control directed by Anton Corbjin. Corbjin had wanted lesser-known actors in all of the band roles, getting them together to actually learn to play the instruments used in the film as Joy Division. McAlarney, along with the rest of the cast, worked with a dialect coach to sound more like the Macclesfield-born Curtis (and the rest of Joy Division). The film was critically acclaimed, and would lead to nominations for multiple awards including the BAFTA Rising Star. McAlarney would make his stage debut in 2007, alongside Elizabeth Alton, Ewan McGregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor in Othello for the Donmar Warehouse theatre organization in London, leading to plaudits of its own, including a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Newcomer in a Play.

Following a supporting role in The Other Boleyn Girl and another tv movie, McAlarney would find himself again at home in the theatre, with another play with Donmar Warehouse. This one would be Red, and he would play the fictional assistant to the main character. The play would have mixed reviews in London, but would transfer to the stage in New York, on Broadway, in early 2010. It would be a smash hit there, nominated for seven Tony Awards and winning 6, including Best Play and a Tony for Best Featured Actor for McAlarney.

In 2010, he would do his first television series for BBC Three, Him & Her as the hapless male lead Steve. This role would continue for 25 episodes, ending in 2013. At the same time, the attention on his career would further increase with his role in One Day, the adaptation to a wildly successful British novel that ended up having mixed results as film due to casting an American actress as the lead female role and again for Donmar Warehouse, as the lead in Richard II.

After hard work as Prince Hal/Henry V in three parts of the four-part miniseries The Hollow Crown (2012) for the BBC, McAlarney would find the opportunity to play noted English physicist Stephen Hawking in a biopic about his life directed by James Marsh. He would spend his free time not filming the final series of Him & Her working with photographs and videos of Hawking, meeting ALS patients and a choreographer on how to best portray the debilitating decline and challenges of ALS. McAlarney also was able to meet Hawking himself along with co-star Bea Fitzallan, adding that “The real problem with making a film is of course it isn’t made chronologically. So it was about having a very clear path of his physical deterioration so that on any day, we would be able to move back and forth, while still focusing on the spark and humour and the narrative.”

In early 2015, McAlarney appeared in a supporting role in Brooklyn (2015), the first to use his native Irish accent. He was also cast as Fitzwilliam Darcy (Mr. Darcy) in the film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, released in February 2016. Additionally, it was announced that McAlarney would star as King Arthur in Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017).

McAlarney starred in the biographical drama Hacksaw Ridge, directed by Academy Award-winning director Mel Gibson. In the film, McAlarney portrayed Desmond T. Doss, the first conscientious objector in US history to be awarded the Medal of Honor. The choice of director was the subject of some controversy, however the film was met with positive acclaim, and in January 2017 he earned his second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor, eventually losing out to Casey Affleck.

In 2016, it was announced that McAlarney will play the role of Prior Walter in Tony Kushner's two-part play Angels in America at the National Theatre, London in the Lyttelton Theatre from April to August 2017. It will be directed by Marianne Elliott and co-star Nathan Lane, Russell Tovey and Denise Gough.

Personal Life McAlarney was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2015.

In addition, he is a champion of the Irish cinema industry and is a patron of Bord Scannán na hÉireann (the Irish Film Board) along with close friend Minna Marks.

Main residence is London. Owned a home in Los Angeles from 2013 until early 2017.

RELATIONSHIPS
Rumored connection to Caroline Flack.

One public relationship/engagement - began dating in mid-2015, engaged in summer 2016, ended late 2016 - became "public knowledge" in 2017.