A low-key, rumpled Irish actor with a slightly hangdog expression, Stephen Rea manages to bring a certain sympathy to the characters he plays, whether it's as a musician avenging a young girl's murder ("Angel" 1982) or a conscience-stricken IRA gunman who befriends the fiancee of his victim ("The Crying Game" 1992), a wry suitor who may or may not stick around when things get tough ("Angie" 1994) or a love-struck cuckold ("The End of the Affair" 1999). Rea began his career at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, followed by extensive work at some of England's most prominent stages, including the National Theatre and the Royal Court ("The Playboy of the Western World", "The Cherry Orchard", "Endgame"). In 1980, he founded his own acting company, the Field Day Theatre, with Irish playwright Brian Friel, and spent five months of each year over the next decade appearing in many of the company's productions.
In the early 1970s, Rea began appearing in British television specials which showed up on US TV, among them, "Color Him Dead" (1974), a mystery thriller which cast him as the male half of a husband-wife private detective team, and an adaptation of Tom Stoppard's "Professional Foul" (1978), about the adventures of a Cambridge professor visiting Prague to deliver a paper. Later in his career, he appeared as Lovborg to Fiona Shaw's "Hedda Gabler" (shown on PBS in 1993) and as a Russian detective tracking down a serial killer known as "Citizen X" (HBO, 1995). Rea had a bit part in the 1978 film "On a Paving Stone Mounted", but his first leading role in films was as a vengeful musician who trades his saxophone for a machine gun in Neil Jordan's directorial debut, "Angel" (1982). Though Rea's work garnered him critical acclaim, it would be another decade before his film career would hit its stride. He followed up in several small British-made films, among them Richard Eyre's road movie "Loose Connections" (1983), a witty take on Brits abroad, with Rea demonstrating the quirky charm that would serve him well in later roles, and Jordan's second film, "The Company of Wolves" (1985), a murky tale within a tale based on the Gothic horror aspects of "Little Red Riding Hood.”
The actor's real breakthrough, though, came in another Jordan film, "The Crying Game" (1992). Cast as an IRA kidnapper who falls for the lover of a man whose death he indirectly caused, Rea subtly conveyed his character's mixed feelings and contradictions in a performance that garnered an Oscar nomination as Best Actor. He also enjoyed success on the West End and Broadway stages that same year as one of three political prisoners in "Someone to Watch Over Me.” With his newfound success and higher profile, Rea received numerous offers for roles in US-produced films. He was cast in Martha Coolidge's "Angie", as a good-natured Irishman who befriends a very pregnant and unmarried Geena Davis, as a muckraking journalist in the period romance "Princess Caraboo", and, marking his fourth collaboration with Jordan, as the vengeful vampire Santiago in the highly anticipated "Interview with the Vampire" (all 1994). Rea finished off the year playing against type as an egocentric superstar photographer who has top fashion editors vying for his services, even as he captures them in compromising situations in Robert Altman's misfire "Ready-to-Wear/Pret-a-Porter.
The prolific actor reunited with Jordan for a pivotal role in the biopic "Michael Collins" (1996) and garnered widespread praise for his interpretation of accused Lindbergh baby kidnapper Bruno Richard Hauptmann in the HBO original "Crime of the Century" (also 1996). Rea returned to his native Ireland to headline "Trojan Eddie" (1997), portraying a down on his luck ex-con who becomes embroiled in mayhem and then once again reunited with Neil Jordan for the dual role of the father of a murderous little boy and the child's grown-up self in the critically acclaimed horror-comedy "The Butcher Boy" (1997). Following a turn as an IRA gunman who flees to NYC and falls in love with a Guatemalan refugee in "The Break" and the keyboardist for a cult band who engineers a reunion for the group in the daffy comedy "Still Crazy" (both 1998), Rea offered terrific turns as a moralistic, fire-and-brimstone preacher in the multigenerational drama "This Is My Father" and a doctor who helps a grieving woman deal with the death of her daughter and the disturbing dreams she's experiencing in Jordan's thriller "In Dreams" (both 1999). That same year, he also essayed a photographer with a penchant for romancing impressionable young women in the delightful romance "Guinevere" and won critical acclaim for his sensitive portrayal of a cuckolded husband in Jordan's World War II love story "The End of the Affair.”
The actor kicked off the new millennium with a string of projects that included directing and starring in an updated version of the beloved Sean O'Casey play "The Plough and the Stars" at the Gaeity Theater in Dublin. He returned to the big screen in “Catch the Sun” (2000), director John Carney’s drama about a suicidal 19-year-old (Cillian Murphy) whose admittance to a psychiatric hospital brings new hope after falling in love with a suicidal girl (Tricia Vessey). He then played the conniving Cardinal Richlieu in “The Musketeer” (2001), a middling version—both creatively and financially—of Alexandre Dumas’ classic, “The Three Musketeers.” In “Snow in August” (2001), Rea was a Jewish refugee from World War II who befriends a Catholic boy (Peter Tambakis) who has witnessed a violent crime. After playing the eccentric boss of a man (James Frain) who becomes increasingly entangled in a bizarre conspiracy in the black comedy “Armadillo” (A&E, 2001), Rea had a supporting role in the horror calamity, “Feardotcom” (2002).
Rea next appeared in the emotionally uplifting drama, “Evelyn” (2002), starring an unlikely Pierce Brosnan as a single dad trying to reunite his family after the courts took his children away and put them into orphanages. After a supporting role as a doctor in the psychological thriller “The I Inside” (Starz!, 2005), Rea reunited once again with Neil Jordan for “Breakfast on Pluto” (2005), playing an obscure nightclub magician in 1970s London who gets involved with a charming transvestite prostitute (Cillian Murphy) who may also be an IRA bomber. “Breakfast on Pluto” marked Rea’s eighth collaboration with Jordan.