ACTOR & HUMANITARIAN
Stephen Rea received an international Academy-Award-nomination for his role in The Crying Game. He’s an Irish film, television, and stage actor born in Belfast to Protestant parents, and is now based in Dublin. With a hugely impressive international CV for roles in films like Interview with the Vampire, V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, The Butcher Boy and The End of The Affair, Stephen co-founded the Field Day Theatre with Irish playwright Brian Friel. He worked with Samuel Beckett and won a BAFTA. Professionally he has never shied away from edgy roles and has managed to play both an IRA terrorist and a paranoid Loyalist with nuance and humanity; “I’ve always attempted to not be restricted by any label – a sectarian label or otherwise…” His latest film role is in the epic famine movie, Black ’47, set in the Irish Famine period.
As an ambassador for UNICEF Ireland, Stephen has publicly appealed for support for the displaced and brutalised children of Syria, visited refugee camps in Jordan and travelled to Mozambique where young children are losing their parents to HIV/AIDS. He feels strongly about the migrant crisis in Europe, calling on people to “get angry….We’re not doing enough because nobody wants to do enough.” He says, “America is built on people and immigration. Britain is a mix of races, and people have to understand how much we’ve taken from the countries people are fleeing.” He believes privileges need to be shared, and we should be willing to welcome the talent, new thought, and the new ways of looking at things that migrants bring.
