As a member of the Dublin-based Passion Machine Theatre company, Gleeson appeared in several of the theatre company's early and highly successful plays such as
Brownbread (1987), written by
Roddy Doyle and directed by
Paul Mercier,
Wasters (1985) and
Home (1988), written and directed by Paul Mercier. He has also written three plays for Passion Machine:
The Birdtable (1987) and
Breaking Up (1988), both of which he directed, and
Babies and Bathwater (1994) in which he acted. Among his other Dublin theatre work are
Patrick Süskind's one-man play
The Double Bass and
John B. Keane's
The Year of the Hiker. Gleeson started his film career at the age of 34. He first came to prominence in Ireland for his role as
Michael Collins in
The Treaty, a television film broadcast on
RTÉ One, and for which he won a
Jacob's Award in 1992. He has acted in such films as
Braveheart,
I Went Down,
Michael Collins,
Gangs of New York,
Cold Mountain,
28 Days Later,
Troy,
Kingdom of Heaven,
Lake Placid,
A.I. Artificial Intelligence,
Mission: Impossible 2, and
The Village. He won critical acclaim for his performance as Irish gangster
Martin Cahill in
John Boorman's 1998 film
The General. In 2003, Gleeson was the voice of Hugh the Miller in an episode of the
Channel 4 animated series
Wilde Stories. While Gleeson portrayed Irish statesman Michael Collins in
The Treaty, he later portrayed Collins' close collaborator
Liam Tobin in the film
Michael Collins with
Liam Neeson taking the role of Collins. Gleeson later went on to portray
Winston Churchill in
Into the Storm. Gleeson won an
Emmy Award for his performance. Gleeson played Barty Crouch Jr impersonating
Hogwarts professor
Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody in the
fourth, and Alastor Moody himself in the
fifth and
seventh Harry Potter films. His son
Domhnall played
Bill Weasley in the seventh and eighth films. at the
Toronto Film Festival 2015 Gleeson provided the voice of Abbot Cellach in
The Secret of Kells, an animated film co-directed by
Tomm Moore and
Nora Twomey of
Cartoon Saloon which premiered in February 2009 at the
Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. Gleeson starred in the short film
Six Shooter in 2006, which won an
Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. This film was written and directed by
Martin McDonagh. In 2008, Gleeson starred in the comedy crime film
In Bruges, also written and directed by McDonagh. The film, and Gleeson's performance, enjoyed huge critical acclaim, earning Gleeson several award nominations, including his first Golden Globe nomination. In the movie, Gleeson plays a mentor-like figure for
Colin Farrell's hitman. In his review of
In Bruges,
Roger Ebert described the elder Gleeson as having a "noble shambles of a face and the heft of a boxer gone to seed." In July 2012, he started filming
The Grand Seduction, with
Taylor Kitsch, a remake of
Jean-François Pouliot's French-Canadian
La Grande Séduction (2003) directed by
Don McKellar; the film was released in 2013. In 2016, he appeared in the video game adaptation ''
Assassin's Creed'' and
Ben Affleck's crime drama
Live by Night. In 2017 he finished
Psychic, a short he directed and starred in. In 2022, he reunited with
Martin McDonagh in the tragic comedy
The Banshees of Inisherin starring opposite
Colin Farrell. For his performance as Colm Doherty, he received numerous awards nominations, including for the
Academy Award,
Golden Globe Award, and
Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Musical talent Gleeson is a
fiddle and
mandolin player, with an interest in
Irish folklore. In the Coen brothers'
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), Gleeson sings "
The Unfortunate Rake". He has also made a contribution in 2019 to the album by Irish folk group
Dervish with a version of
Rocky Road To Dublin. ==Personal life==