Dillane is an experienced theatre actor; his notable roles include Archer in ''
The Beaux' Stratagem (Royal National Theatre, 1989), Prior Walter in Angels in America (1993), Hamlet'' (1994), Clov in
Samuel Beckett's
Endgame (1996),
Uncle Vanya (1998), Henry in
Tom Stoppard's
The Real Thing (for which he won a Tony Award in 2000),
The Coast of Utopia (2002), and a one-man version of
Macbeth (2005) directed by
Travis Preston. He has also performed
T.S. Eliot's
Four Quartets in London and New York City, and was seen in the 2010 Bridge Project's productions of
The Tempest and
As You Like It. Dillane also portrayed
Horatio in the
1990 film adaptation of
Hamlet. He played Michael Henderson in
Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), a character based on British journalist
Michael Nicholson, and the impatient and easily agitated Harker in
Spy Game (2001). Dillane is also known for his portrayal of
Leonard Woolf in
The Hours (2002), English
professional golfer Harry Vardon in
The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005) and Glen Foy in the
Goal! trilogy. He also starred in
John Adams as
Thomas Jefferson. He joined the cast of
Game of Thrones in 2011 as
Stannis Baratheon, a major contender for the throne of the fictional realm of Westeros. While admitting he had not read
the books on which the series is based, he commented that the show's appeal was due to "the storytelling, the extraordinary world that’s created and the way it reflects our actual world – a naked, ruthless pursuit of power in all its forms." In 2012, he also played Rupert Keel, head of the private security agency Byzantium, in the BBC drama series
Hunted. The following year he went on to take the male lead, opposite
Clémence Poésy, in the crime drama series
The Tunnel, an Anglo-French remake of the Scandinavian
The Bridge. Dillane, who had not seen the original series, plays Karl Roebuck, the laid-back, experienced British detective to Poésy's humourless French counterpart. In a second series in 2016, titled
The Tunnel: Sabotage, he reprised his role alongside Poésy for a new case involving a deadly airliner crash in the
English Channel. Besides television, Dillane also starred in the 2012 British independent film
Papadopoulos & Sons as successful entrepreneur Harry Papadopoulos, who rediscovers his life after being forced to start again from nothing in the wake of a banking crisis. His son,
Frank Dillane, plays his son in the film. That same year he also had roles in the films
Zero Dark Thirty and
Twenty8k. Offscreen, the actor in 2014 collaborated with visual artist
Tacita Dean for the
Sydney Biennale and
Carriageworks in a project called
Event for a Stage. The work, performed live and later adapted for radio broadcast and film, explored the process of filmmaking and the "concept of artifice on the stage" through a single actor, Dillane. The performance encompassed readings from texts as well as his personal reflections on acting, theatre, and family. 2015 saw Dillane making other brief returns to stage including a reprise of his reading of
Four Quartets in London and a one-off appearance in
Tim Crouch's
An Oak Tree at the National Theatre. In 2016, besides appearing in the second series of
The Tunnel, Dillane returned to the
Donmar Warehouse for a revival of
Brian Friel's
Faith Healer. His performance as Frank, an itinerant Irish healer, was described as "poetic and powerful." In addition, he appeared as artist
Graham Sutherland in
The Crown,
Netflix's TV series about British monarch
Elizabeth II. In 2017, Dillane appeared in two biopics, playing
Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax in
Joe Wright's
Darkest Hour, as the antagonist of
Gary Oldman as
Winston Churchill, and writer
William Godwin, the father of
Frankenstein author
Mary Shelley, in the film
Mary Shelley. In 2018, he appeared in the film
The Thin Man, which has since been retitled
The Man In The Hat, opposite
Ciarán Hinds; it was directed by Oscar-winning composer
Stephen Warbeck. ==Personal life==