Background

Shaw was born on July 10, 1958, in Farranree, County Cork. Her father, Denis Wilson, was an ophthalmic surgeon, and her mother, Mary, was a physicist.

Education

Fiona Shaw attended secondary school at Scoil Mhuire in Cork City. She received her degree in philosophy at University College Cork. When Fiona was in school, her teachers complained that she spoke too much. She was brought up by nuns until she was 9 years old.

Then Shaw trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London and was part of a 'new wave' of actors to emerge from the Academy.

Career

During the '80s Fiona Shaw worked mainly on-stage as part of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Some of her stage credits include As You Like It, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and a one-woman reading of T.S. Eliot's epic poem The Waste Land, just to name a few.

She made her film debut in 1984 as one of the nuns in the WWII drama Sacred Hearts, but her breakthrough role came in 1989 as the doctor whom Christy Brown grows infatuated with in My Left Foot. The next year, she played the wife of an explorer in the British Empire film Mountains of the Moon. She also excelled at comedy with memorable roles in Three Men and a Little Lady, London Kills Me, Super Mario Bros., and Undercover Blues.

In 1995, she turned to literary adaptations and costume dramas with Persuasion, Jane Eyre, and Anna Karenina. She then played Francie's sharp-tongued mother in Neil Jordan's childhood drama The Butcher Boy. Around this time, her longtime colleague Deborah Warner directed the controversial television adaptation of Richard II, with Shaw in the lead role of the young king. Also on television, she played Hedda Hopper in the HBO movie RKO 281 and Irma Prunesquallor in the BBC miniseries Gormenghast. She collaborated with director Warner again for The Last September, based on the novel by Irish author Elizabeth Bowen.

In 2001, she received the honorary Companion of the British Empire award and portrayed the spinster scientist Leontine in Clare Peploe's The Triumph of Love. Returning to the stage to play Medea on Broadway, she found herself well-costumed once again as the wretched Aunt Petunia Dursely in the series of Harry Potter feature films. Though she returned as required for the many Potter films, she also appeared in The Triumph of Love, Catch and Release, and Terrence Malick's well-reviewed Tree of Life.

In 2012, Shaw appeared in the National Theatre revival of Scenes from an Execution by Howard Barker. In 2018 Shaw began portraying Carolyn Martens, head of the MI6 Russian Desk, in BBC America's Killing Eve, for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Television Series. Later the same year, she played a senior MI6 officer in Mrs. Wilson.

Achievements

• 

  Shaw was already an acknowledged stage actress before she made a name for herself in television and film. She gained worldwide fame for her role as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter film series (2001–10), as Marnie Stonebrook in season four of the HBO series True Blood (2011), and as Carolyn Martens in the BBC series Killing Eve (2018–present), for which she won the 2019 BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress. For her performances in the second seasons of Killing Eve and the comedy-drama Fleabag, Shaw received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series respectively. For the third season of Killing Eve, she was again nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.
  
  Shaw has worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. She won the 1990 Olivier Award for Best Actress for various roles, including Electra, the 1994 Olivier Award for Best Actress for Machinal, and the 1997 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for The Waste Land. Her other stage work includes playing the title role in Medea in the West End and on Broadway (2001–02). She was awarded an Honorary CBE in 2001. In 2020, she was listed at number 29 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
  
  

Works

More photos

• movie

  • The Last September

    (Based on Elizabeth Bowen's acclaimed novel, "The Last Sep...)

    1999
  • My Left Foot

    (My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown, also known simp...)

    1989
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

    (Harry Potter and Dumbledore's warning about the return of...)

    2007
  • Pixels

    (A special team of arcade gamers is put together to fight ...)

    2015
  • The Avengers

    (Two secret agents, John Steed and Dr Emma Peel, are assig...)

    1998
  • Jane Eyre

    (Based on Charlotte Bronte's novel of the same name, a sto...)

    1996
  • Super Mario Bros.

    (Brooklyn plumbers Mario and Luigi get the shock of their ...)

    1993
  • Catch And Release

    (After the death of her fiance, Gray Wheeler decides to mo...)

    2006
  • The Hippopotamus

    (In need of money to fund his boozing, a once esteemed poe...)

    2017
  • The English Teacher

    (The life of a popular teacher (Julianne Moore) turns tops...)

    2013
  • Anna Karenina

    (Based on Leo Tolstoy's novel in 19th-century Russia where...)

    1997
  • Triumph of Love

    (A princess is determined to get things right for her home...)

    2001
  • Dorian Gray

    (An attractive Englishman's image is captured in a paintin...)

    2009
  • Colette

    (After moving to Paris, author Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette a...)

    2018
  • London Kills Me

    (A young man who wants desperately to pull out of London's...)

    1991
  • Three Men And A Little Lady

    (Sylvia and her six-year-old girl are living with three ba...)

    1990
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

    (Harry, Ron, and Hermoine return to Hogwarts just as they ...)

    2004
  • The Butcher Boy

    (Francie (Eamonn Owens) has a disastrous childhood and ret...)

    1997
  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

    (Harry Potter, an eleven-year-old orphan, discovers that h...)

    2001
  • Lizzie

    (In 1892 Lizzie Borden lives a quiet life in Massachusetts...)

    2018
  • The Black Dahlia

    (Two cops, Bucky and Lee find their lives fall apart when ...)

    2006
  • Undercover Blues

    (Jane and Jefferson Blue are spies who decide to move with...)

    1993
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

    (After Voldemort takes over the Ministry of Magic, Harry, ...)

    2010
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

    (A house-elf warns Harry against returning to Hogwarts, bu...)

    2002
  • Persuasion

    (Anne is distraught after her family calls off her wedding...)

    1995
  • The Tree Of Life

    (Jack tries to mend the troubled relationship that he shar...)

    2011
  • Mountains of the Moon

    (Presents the tale of Captain Richard Francis Burton's and...)

    1990
  • Fracture

    (Ted is arrested for the attempted murder of his wife. Wil...)

    2007

• TV series

  • True Blood

    (Sookie Stackhouse works as a barmaid in Louisiana and has...)

    2011
  • Killing Eve

    (Eve's life as a spy is not adding up to what she had hope...)

    2018

Religion

Shaw identifies as a Roman Catholic.

Politics

Shaw said about democracy: "The word democracy has no meaning. Duty has gone. Only rights remain."

"Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th."

Views

Quotations: "Even when they have nothing, the Irish emit a kind of happiness, a joy.

"I just think that things should be allowed to run their course, and not turned into a Disney ride."

"There's something about the Irish that is remarkable."

"This whole tribal loyalty seems to have gone."

"And by endlessly sanitizing our feelings, we actually feed a disgruntled nation."

"I enjoy making films, but my heart is in the stage. Every night you have to be on. There's no second take."

"I think America becomes more disgruntled by going to the movies and having an endlessly good time at them."

"To be honest I live among the English and have always found them to be very honest in their business dealings. They are noble, hard-working and anxious to do the right thing. But joy eludes them, they lack the joy that the Irish have."

"There once was a demographic survey done to determine if money was connected to happiness and Ireland was the only place where this did not turn out to be true."

"A relationship is sent by God and accident."

"Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time."

"A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano."

"The energy released by it is enormous and it becomes quite addictive, the power between the audience and the actor."

"I'm not afraid of chaos and I'm happy talking to strangers. I really love not knowing where I'm going."

"Every generation is obsessed with the decade before they were born.

"I find it incredibly tedious, hate that it murders itself with its own conservative pomposity."

"I certainly had no intention of playing a man."

"I can hardly decide what plays I should be in."

"Honestly, I get more recognized for 'Three Men and a Little Lady' than 'Harry Potter'."

"I would say the next imminent hot writers are often the writers from the decade before you were born."

"I would love to write the story of my upbringing in Ireland."

"I take the theater seriously in that I loathe it, I'm bored by it."

"I loathe bad theater and most theatre is very bad because it's repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously, it is sometimes praised for those things."

"I had a ball doing Harry Potter."

"Once you've done one style, you leave it for a while."

"One moment cannot be the most important."

"Like a lot of Irish households we read a lot of Irish history. It was almost Soviet, raising the next generation with a mythic view of their history."

"Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history."

"My mother taught me to read."

"Theater is dangerously open to repetition. It's exciting when you hit on a new way."

"So I just play the character, I play the lines."

"People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera."

"The Americans are very clear, and obsessed with nouns."

"Theater dates very quickly."

"My mother adores singing and plays piano. My uncle was a phenomenal pianist. My brother John is a double bassist. I used to play the piano, badly, and cello. My brother Peter played violin."

"There is a great relief in experiencing the worst vicariously."

"There was no professional theater in Cork, but still I did a lot of performing."

"I once saw my mother playing Mary Magdalene in a parish event. But she had to put the role aside in order to go and front the choir who were singing at the same occasion. She left the stage halfway through the Crucifixion."

"I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted."

Membership

Fiona Shaw became an Associate Member of RADA.

In 2019, Fiona Shaw became a patron of London-based not-for-profit Irish Film London, which celebrates and champions Irish film, TV, and animation in Great Britain.

• 

  Associate Member

  RADA

• 

  Irish Film London

  2019 - present

Personality

Shaw is a lesbian.

Thin-lipped and statuesque Irish actress Fiona Shaw frequently takes the lead on the theatrical stage but steers her talents toward supporting roles in feature films.

A fitness enthusiast, Shaw commutes around her home base in London on her bicycle.

She is fond of poetry.

Physical Characteristics: Build: slim

Height: 5 ft 8 in (173 cm)

Weight: 58 kg (128 lbs)

Hair color: Light Brown

Eye color: Green

Distinctive features: smile, thin lips, and statuesque

Interests

• Riding a bicycle

• Politicians

  Thomas Paine

• Writers

  Poetry

• Sport & Clubs

  Fitness

Connections

Shaw is a lesbian and was previously in a relationship with actress Saffron Burrows. Currently, she is married to the economist Dr. Sonali Deraniyagala. She met her after reading Deraniyagala's doctor's book Wave: Life and Memories after the Tsunami, where she had documented the experience of the loss of her family in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.

Father:

Denis Wilson

Mother:

Mary Wilson

Spouse:

Sonali Deraniyagala

(born 1964)

She is a Sri Lankan memoirist and economist.

Brother:

John Wilson

Brother:

Peter Wilson

Died at the age of 18 in a car crash.

Partner:

Saffron Burrows

Saffron Dominique Burrows is a British-American actress and model. Burrows has appeared in films such as Circle of Friends, Wing Commander, Deep Blue Sea, Gangster No. 1, Enigma, Troy, Reign Over Me, and The Bank Job.

colleague:

Richard Griffiths

Richard Thomas Griffiths was an English actor of film, television, and stage.

colleague:

Daniel Radcliffe

Daniel Radcliffe is an English actor and producer. He rose to international stardom as Harry Potter in the series of films based on the hugely popular books by J.K. Rowling.

colleague:

Harry Melling

Harry Edward Melling is an English actor. He portrays Dudley Dursley, Harry Potter's spoiled cousin and the son of Vernon and Petunia Dursley, in the film adaptations of the Harry Potter books.

References

• Fiona Shaw Biography