Dervla Kirwan

Dervla Kirwan
Born	Dervla Kirwan 24 October 1971 (1971-10-24) (age 38) Churchtown, Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1991-present
Spouse(s)	Rupert Penry-Jones

Dervla Kirwan (born 24 October 1971) is an Irish actress famous for roles in British television shows such as Ballykissangel and Goodnight Sweetheart. . She also appeared in the Doctor Who Christmas special episode, "The Next Doctor". She also provided the voiceovers for the well-known "this is not just food" TV advertising campaign for UK retailer Marks & Spencer.

Kirwan was born in Churchtown, Dublin, Ireland. Her father was an insurance broker, and her mother was a language teacher. She is the youngest of three daughters.

Career

Her first credited TV roles were in the TV series Troubles in 1988 and the The Lilac Bus in 1990 alongside Stephanie Beacham based on Maeve Binchy's novel.

Dervla moved to London when she was sixteen after getting cast in a play in Bush Theatre. Dervla described leaving Ireland at the age of sixteen to live in London was very difficult. 'I was lonely, I didn't know anyone. I was way too young to be in London on my own. You'd never get that now.' She almost went home, but feared where that might lead'. She also wanted to escape her Catholic upbringing. 'It was a liberal Catholic upbringing, but at that time in Ireland it was all about religion, and religion didn't make sense to me. It really didn't. I struggled with it then and I struggle with it now.'

She won London critical acclaim in 1988 for her 'firm but fragile' performance as the factory girl Linda in A Handful of Stars, the Bush Theatre premiere of the first play in Billy Roche's Wexford Trilogy. In 1992, again at the Bush, she starred in a revival of the complete trilogy.

She got her television break in the 1991 BBC Scotland production of A Time To Dance, adapted by Melvyn Bragg from his own novel, playing Bernadette Kennedy. In the same year, she also appeared in the play Water Music at the Cockpit Theatre written by award-winning playwright Lyndon Morgans (singer-songwriter with the Welsh folk noir band Songdog). In a busy 1992 she also starred in Hush by April de Angelis at the Royal Court Theatre, while January 1994 found her playing in Peter Hall's seasonal production of Georges Feydeau's farce An Absolute Turkey at the Globe Theatre

Kirwan briefly appeared in Casualty, and in the first three series of Goodnight Sweetheart alongside Nicholas Lyndhurst before leaving the series, after which her role as 'Phoebe Sparrow' was recast to Elizabeth Carling. Some viewers found Dervla very impressive for an Irish actress to play a character with an authenic English accent in Goodnight Sweetheart.^{[citation needed]} In 1997 she sang with Dustin the Turkey on his cover of "Fairytale of New York" for his album Faith of Our Feathers.

For 23 episodes, from 1996-1998, she appeared in Ballykissangel in the role of Assumpta Fitzgerald. Assumpta is the landlady of BallyK's only pub, Fitzgeralds, and is no friend of the church - until Father Peter Clifford (Stephen Tompkinson) is posted to the village from his previous parish in Manchester. She also continued this role for a Comic Relief special of The Vicar of Dibley, and on a special of Father Ted. Dervla's performance in Ballykissangel won her the National TV Award for Best Actress in 1996, and the Irish Post Award for Best Irish Entertainer, 1997. In 1998 she starred alongside Christopher Eccleston in the film With Or Without You as Belfast girl Rosie Boyd.

In 1999, she appeared in another BBC production, a made for TV Christmas film called The Greatest Store in the World. She played a single mum of two girls who are made homeless a few days before Christmas. The film tells the story of their adventures in Scottley's, a very special department store, where they live in secret until the council can re-house them. They unravel the robbery committed by the store's Santa and Elf and are then given a special Christmas dinner as a means of thank you by the store's owner, Mr. Scottley. Kirwan co-starred with Brian Blessed and Peter Capaldi. In 2001 she starred in the TV series The Bombmaker as a former IRA bomb maker.

Kirwan starred in School for Seduction, a 2004 film which also starred Kelly Brook. She appeared in BBC 1 crime drama series 55 Degrees North with Don Gilet, which aired in 2004. She returned for a second series in 2005. The series was shown in the U.S. under the title The Night Detective. In 2005, she also appeared on the Lyttelton stage at the National Theatre in the role of Alice in Brian Friel's Aristocrats.

In 2007, she worked in BBC drama True Dare Kiss and on stage in Harold Pinter's Betrayal at the Donmar Warehouse.^[1]

She is the voice of Marks & Spencer on their food advertisements on British television. During the Christmas period of 2008, several other notable British figures temporarily replaced her. These included David Jason, Michael Parkinson, Joan Collins and Robson Green.

Kirwan appeared as the villain Miss Hartigan in The Next Doctor, the 2008 Christmas special of Doctor Who, alongside David Tennant and David Morrissey.^[2][3]

In 2009, Kirwan was in BBC drama Moving On, where she played Laura in episode Dress To Impress.

Dervla's next role is in the Irish film Ondine alongside Colin Farrell and Stephen Rea released in 2009.

Personal life

Kirwan is married to actor Rupert Penry-Jones,^[1] with whom she has two children, Florence and Peter.

She and Penry-Jones both appeared in Casanova in 2005, although they did not share any scenes. They had worked on stage together in 2001 in a West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, production of J B Priestley's Dangerous Corner, when he played Robert Caplan to her Olwen Peel; in November, the production then transferred to the Garrick Theatre for a successful four-month West End season.

External links

• Dervla Kirwan at the Internet Movie Database
• Dervla-Kirwan.co.uk
• "Dervla Kirwan: whirling Dervla" (actor profile)

References

• Theatre Record and its annual Indexes