Early life and family

Coyle was born in Corby, Northamptonshire, to an Irish father and Scottish mother; his parents moved to Corby from Strabane

Strabane

Strabane , historically spelt Straban,is a town in west County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It contains the headquarters of Strabane District Council....

, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Coyle holds Irish and British citizenship. He is the great nephew of football manager Sir Matt Busby. In September 2011 The Daily Mail

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

 ran an article mentioning Coyle's wife; he later clarified that he was referring to his fictional wife on Downton Abbey.

Education

He studied at a drama school in Dublin in 1981, and then received a scholarship to Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts

Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts

Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts is an independent drama school situated in the Wood Green area of North London. It was founded in 1945 by Peter Coxhead and Ralph Nossek as 'The Mountview Theatre Club', an amateur repertory company staging a new production for a six-day run every second week...

 in England in 1983.

Career

Brendan Coyle received a Laurence Olivier Award in 1999 for his performance in Conor McPherson

Conor McPherson

Conor McPherson is an Irish playwright and director.-Life and career:McPherson was born in Dublin, . He was educated at University College Dublin, McPherson began writing his first plays there as a member of UCD Dramsoc, the college's dramatic society, and went on to found Fly By Night Theatre...

's The Weir

The Weir

The Weir is a play written by Conor McPherson in 1997. It was first produced at The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London, England, on 4 July 1997. It first appeared on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on 1 April 1999. It has since been performed in Toronto, Dublin, Belfast, Boston,...

and won a New York Critics Theater World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut for the same play in its New York production. In 2001, Coyle appeared in the film Conspiracy as Gestapo

Gestapo

The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

 Chief Heinrich Müller. He played Kaz Sweeney in the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

 True Dare Kiss

True Dare Kiss

True Dare Kiss is a British television drama produced for BBC One. It is written by Debbie Horsfield and produced by Marcus Wilson and features Dervla Kirwan, David Bradley and Lorraine Ashbourne...

, and Nicholas Higgins on the BBC's North and South. Since 2008, he has played the pivotal part of Robert Timmins in three BBC series based on the Lark Rise to Candleford

Lark Rise to Candleford

Lark Rise to Candleford is a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels about the countryside of north-east Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, England, at the end of the 19th century. They were written by Flora Thompson and first published together in 1945...

novels, written by Flora Thompson

Flora Thompson

Flora Jane Thompson was an English novelist and poet famous for her semi-autobiographical trilogy about the English countryside, Lark Rise to Candleford.-Early life and family:...

. In 2010, he began playing John Bates, a lame valet and former British Army batman of the Earl of Grantham in Julian Fellowes

Julian Fellowes

Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, DL , known as Julian Fellowes, is an English actor, novelist, film director and screenwriter, as well as a Conservative peer.-Early life:...

's period drama series, Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey is a British television period drama series, produced by NBC Universal-owned British media company Carnival Films for the ITV network. The series is set during the late Edwardian era and the First World War on the fictional estate of Downton Abbey in Yorkshire, and features an...

. Fellowes

Julian Fellowes

Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, DL , known as Julian Fellowes, is an English actor, novelist, film director and screenwriter, as well as a Conservative peer.-Early life:...

 wrote the part for Coyle.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1992	Fool's Gold: The Story of the Brink's-Mat Robbery	Det. Sgt. Benwell	TV movie
	The Bill The Bill The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...	Chris Bailey	TV series (1 episode: "Radio Waves")
1994	Ailsa	Miles Butler
1995	The Glass Virgin	Manuel Mendoza	TV mini-series (1 episode: "Episode #1.1")
	Dangerfield	David Walsh	TV series (2 episodes)
1996	Silent Witness Silent Witness Silent Witness is a BBC crime thriller series focusing on a team of forensic pathology experts and their investigations into various crimes. First broadcast in February 1996, the series is still airing to the present day, with a fifteenth series expected to air in January 2012. The series was...	Liam Slattery	TV series (2 episodes)
	Thief Takers Thief Takers Thief Takers was a police drama series made by Central Independent Television for the ITV network. The show depicted the work of a team in the Metropolitan Police Service's Flying Squad...	D.I Bob "Bingo" Tate	TV series (4 episodes)
1997	The Last Bus Home	Steve Burkett
	Tomorrow Never Dies Tomorrow Never Dies Tomorrow Never Dies is the eighteenth spy film in the James Bond series, and the second to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Bruce Feirstein wrote the screenplay, and it was directed by Roger Spottiswoode. It follows Bond as he tries to stop a media mogul from engineering...	Leading Seaman - HMS Bedford
1998	Soft Sand, Blue Sea	Gerry
	The General The General (1998 film) The General is a British-Irish crime film directed by John Boorman about Dublin crime boss Martin Cahill, who pulled off several daring heists in the early 1980s, and attracted the attention of the Gardaí, PIRA, and UVF. The film was shot in 1997 and released in 1998...	UVF Leader
	Happy Birthday To Me		short
1999	I Could Read the Sky I Could Read the Sky I Could Read the Sky is a 1999 Irish/UK film directed by Nichola Bruce. It is based upon a photographic novel by Timothy O'Grady and Steve Pyke, which concerns the Irish experience of emigration and exile. It has been described as an "innovative, melancholic, and deeply moving film"-Plot:The film...	Francie
2000	McCready and Daughter	Donal McCready	TV movie
	Paths to Freedom Paths to Freedom Paths to Freedom was a popular comedy on the Irish television network RTÉ Two. The shows stars two characters, Jeremy and Rats , who have both recently been released from a Dublin prison...	Jeremy Fitzgerald	TV series (6 episodes)
2001	Rebel Heart Rebel Heart (film) Rebel Heart is a 2001 British television drama miniseries starring James D'Arcy as the fictional Ernie Coyne, an Irish nationalist. It is in four parts, and set during the Irish War of Independence from 1916 until the end of the Civil War. Michael Collins was idolised by Ernie, and was...	Michael Collins	TV mini-series
	The Inspector Lynley Mysteries The Inspector Lynley Mysteries The Inspector Lynley Mysteries is a series of BBC television programmes about Detective Inspector Thomas "Tommy" Lynley, 8th Earl of Asherton of Scotland Yard and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers...	Richard Tey	TV series (1 episode: "A Great Deliverance")
	The Bombmaker	George McEvoy	TV movie
	Conspiracy	SS Maj. Gen. Heinrich Müller	TV movie
	Mapmaker	Robert Bates
2002	Rockface	Douglas McLanaghan	TV series (7 episodes)
2003	Waking the Dead Waking the Dead (TV series) Waking the Dead is a British television police procedural crime drama series produced by the BBC featuring a fictional Cold Case Unit comprising CID police officers, a psychological profiler and a forensic scientist. A pilot episode aired in September 2000 and there have been a total of nine series...	Martin Corgan	TV series (2 episodes)
	Single	Paul	TV series
2004	Amnesia	D.C Ian Reid	TV movie
	Omagh Omagh (film) Omagh was a film dramatising the events surrounding the Omagh bombing and its aftermath, co-produced by Irish state broadcaster RTÉ and UK network Channel 4, and directed by Pete Travis. It was first shown on television in both countries in June, 2004....	D.S John White	TV movie
	North and South	Nicholas Higgins	TV mini-series (4 episodes)
2005	Allegiance	Michael Collins
	The Jacket The Jacket The Jacket is a 2005 psychological thriller film directed by John Maybury that is partly based on the Jack London novel of the same name, released in the US as The Star Rover. Massy Tadjedin wrote the screenplay based on a story by Tom Bleecker and Marc Rocco...	Damon
	Shameless Shameless Shameless is a British television drama series set in Manchester on the fictional Chatsworth council estate. Produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4, the first seven-episode series aired weekly on Tuesday nights at 10pm from 13 January 2004...	Father Polish	TV series (1 episode: "Episode #2.4")
	Jericho	Christie	TV series (3 episodes)
	The Ghost Squad The Ghost Squad The Ghost Squad was a 2005 British crime drama series produced by Company Pictures, for Channel 4. The show was created by Tom Grieves. Inspired by the real life "Ghost Squad" that existed between 1994 and 1998, secretly investigating police corruption, the premise of the series is that the squad...	Sgt. Ralph Allan	TV series (1 episode: "Heroes")
2006	The Commander: Blacklight	Carl Dirkwood	TV movie
	Soundproof Soundproof (TV drama) Soundproof was a 2006 BBC television drama, directed by Edmund Coulthard and written by Joe Fisher. It starred Joseph Mawle and Susan Lynch as a profoundly deaf man accused of murder and his sign-language interpreter. It was conducted partly in sign-language and subtitles...	D.I Dave Cox	TV movie
	Offside	Duncan Miller
	Prime Suspect: The Final Act	D.C.S Mitchell	TV movie
	Perfect Parents Perfect Parents (2006 film) Perfect Parents is a 2006 film written and directed by Joe Ahearne for ITV. It stars Christopher Eccleston and Susannah Harker as Stuart and Alison, who try to get their daughter Lucy into a Catholic school after she witnesses a knife fight at her old school.To improve their chances, they fake...	Ed	TV movie
2007	The Mark of Cain The Mark of Cain (2007 film) The Mark of Cain is a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award-winning British television film first broadcast in 2007 following three young men as they experience the extremity of war for the first time, and the permanent effects of what they have seen and done as they return from their...	Davey Gulliver
	Wedding Belles Wedding Belles Wedding Belles is a Scottish-based British television drama first broadcast on Channel 4 in 2007.-Plot:Wedding Belles centres around four young women struggling with personal issues, while preparing to throw one of their group the wedding of the year...	Priest	TV movie
	The Good Samaritan	Lewis Farrell	TV movie
	Damage	Aidan Cahill	TV movie
	True Dare Kiss True Dare Kiss True Dare Kiss is a British television drama produced for BBC One. It is written by Debbie Horsfield and produced by Marcus Wilson and features Dervla Kirwan, David Bradley and Lorraine Ashbourne...	Kaz Sweeney	TV series (6 episodes)
2008 - 2010	Lark Rise to Candleford Lark Rise to Candleford (TV series) Lark Rise to Candleford is a British television costume drama series, adapted by the BBC from Flora Thompson's trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels about the English countryside, published between 1939 and 1943. The first episode aired on 13 January 2008 on BBC One and BBC HD in the UK. In the...	Robert Timmins	TV series (31 episodes: 2008-2010)
2009	Inspector George Gently	Patrick Donovan	TV series(1 episode: "Gently in the Night")
	Perrier's Bounty	Jerome
	Blue Murder Blue Murder (UK TV series) Blue Murder was a British crime drama television series based in Manchester. Shown on ITV from 2003 until 2009 when it was axed by the Network, it starred Caroline Quentin as DCI Janine Lewis.-Outline:...	Derek Jowell	TV series (2 episodes)
2010-present	Downton Abbey Downton Abbey Downton Abbey is a British television period drama series, produced by NBC Universal-owned British media company Carnival Films for the ITV network. The series is set during the late Edwardian era and the First World War on the fictional estate of Downton Abbey in Yorkshire, and features an...	John Bates	TV series
2011	The Raven The Raven (2011 film) The Raven is an upcoming thriller film directed by James McTeigue, based on a screenplay by Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare. It is due for release on March 9, 2012.-Plot:...	Reagan	post-production

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