MINI BIO
Date of Birth: January 1st 1974
An Irish actress, best known for her role in Ae Fond Kiss.... She has won the London Film Critics Circle British Actress of the Year award for 2004, and has twice won the IFTA Best Actor in a Leading Role (Film) award.
In 1995, she got her first TV role as Regina Crosbie in the serial Glenroe, one of Irish channel RTE's highest-rated shows. She stayed for three years until 1998. Other TV work followed, until she was offered her first feature film in 1997, All Souls' Day by Alan Gilsenan.
She played a variety of roles in Irish films, including Drinking Crude (1997), co-starring Colin Farrell, and TV movie Miracle at Midnight (1998), with Mia Farrow.
Her arguably most prominent part so far has been the female leading part (Roisin Hanlon) in the Ken Loach movie Ae Fond Kiss... (2003/4), which won her many awards, including the 2005 London Critics Circle Film Award as "British Actress of the Year".
She has also appeared in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto, Ol Parker's Imagine Me & You and Save Angel Hope by Lukas Erni in 2005 and in Brian Kirk's Middletown in 2006. Most recently, Birthistle starred as human rights lawyer Jane Lavery in the TV conspiracy drama The State Within in 2006.
