Background

Patrick Malahide was born as Patrick Gerald Duggan on March 24, 1945. Patrick grew up in the Thames Valley west of London in the village of Pangbourne, where Kenneth Grahame wrote about Mole, Toad, and Rat in the 1908 children's classic The Wind in the Willows. Malahide's Irish immigrant parents each held down two jobs to send Patrick and their other two children to the best schools. It paid off for his acting career because he used the experience to learn the many dialects of the English language such as Berkshire and Irish accents as well as many others later in life.

Education

Patrick attended St. Anne's Primary and then the Douai School of the Benedictine Abbey at Upper Woolhampton, Berkshire, a well-regarded Catholic boarding school which he attended in the late 1950s and early 1960s. At both schools, Patrick received an excellent education and learned to mix with upper-class children and mimic the articulation and cadence of their speech. Malahide attended The University of Edinburgh for two years where he studied literature and psychology and performed with a dramatic society, but he left it feeling unsatisfied and decided to try his hand at acting.

Career

Patrick Malahide took his stage name from Malahide Castle, where his mother worked as a cook. After two years at Edinburgh University, prior to making it as an actor Patrick Malahide has worked at Forest County Grammar School for Boys, Wokingham, England for two years teaching English, then has sold door-to-door English bone china to American forces stationed in Germany. In 1969 Malahide became the stage manager of the Byre Theatre in St. Andrews, Scotland. By the next year, Malahide was the company's artistic director (1970-1972).

He appeared in (as waiter) Hotel in Amsterdam, (as George Fenton) A Boston Story, (as Blind Pew) Valiant in Velvet: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, (as Frank Innes) The Weir of Hermiston, (as Hubert) Night Must Fall, (as Fainall) The Way of the World, and (as Trigorin) The Sea Gull. It was in St. Andrews where Malahide got his first writing experience. Since there were not enough actors in the company to perform any of Shakespeare's plays, Patrick helped to write a play titled And When Love Speaks, which draws together the themes of love from several of Shakespeare's works, The Open (played the louse), The High Bid (played Captain Yule), Charley's Aunt (played Sir Francis Chesney), Harvey (played Dr. Chumley), Plaza Suite, Tango, Enemy, The Price, The Wind in the Branches of the Sassafras Trees, The Puncture, Mother Peg, Enter a Free Man, Lovers, Candida, Come Blow Your Horn, Hay Fever, A Button Missing, He also directed Knox and Mary, Edinburgh Festival, 1972, and SUS, Liverpool, England. Malahide also worked at Prince of Wales Theatre, London's West End.

After three years in St. Andrews, Malahide became an actor with the Royal Theatre Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland (1973-1978). He said: "I didn't have to design the sets, record the music, light the stage, or hire and fire the company," as he had at the Byre, "All I had to do was to act." As a member of Royal Lyceum Theatre Company, Patrick appeared in (as Jimmy Porter) Look Back in Anger, (as a man on the moon) Jack and the Beanstalk, (as Proteus) Two Gentlemen of Verona,(as Sergius) Arms and the Man, (as Guildenstern) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,(as Adolphus Cusins) Major Barbara, (as Clov) Endgame, (as Teddy) The Homecoming, (as doctor) Woyzeck, (as Guildenstern) Hamlet, (as Nicobar) The Apple Cart, (as Father So-and-So) God Is Good, (as a photographer) Benny Lynch: Scenes from a Short Life, (as Edward) The Voysey Inheritance, (as Wormwood) Cinderella, (as Porfiri) Crime and Punishment, and (as Antonio) Twelfth Night.

By 1979, Malahide had moved up in the theater world again, this time to the Bristol Old Vic Repertory company (1979-1990), and had started to break into films and television. As a member of Bristol Old Vic Repertory Company, Patrick appeared in (as father) Beauty and the Beast, (as Mr. Fox) Tis a Mad World My Masters, (as the anarchist) The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, (as Lopakhin) The Cherry Orchard, (as George III) In the Ruins (solo show; also performed at New Vic Studio, Bristol, and Royal Court Theatre), (as Astrov) Uncle Vanya, (as Mr. Sterling) The Clandestine Marriage, and (as fool) King Lear. Malahide made his television debut in 1976 in an episode of Flight of the Heron, but his big breakthrough came in 1981 for his critically acclaimed performance in the one-man show Judgment. Then came worldwide recognition from productions such as The Killing Fields (1984), A Month in the Country (1987), the TV documentary investigation drama: Inside a Terrorist Bombing (1990), A Man of No Importance (1994), U.S. Marshals (1998), and Billy Elliot (2000).

Malahide's best-known roles are as Detective Sergeant Chisholm, the cop who could never seem to catch crook Arthur Daley in the long-running television series Minder, and as three different characters in the miniseries The Singing Detective. His role in The Singing Detective series unwittingly put him at the center of a political firestorm about decency on state-funded British television. On one episode of the show, one of Malahide's characters had sex in the woods with one of the show's female characters; as broadcast, this scene involved a shot of Malahide's bare buttocks during the act. Although the scene was ranked the top nude moment ever in British television by the London Observer, certain conservative politicians were not amused.

Television series also include The Standard, Dear Enemy, The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries, Middlemarch, Game of Thrones as Balon Greyjoy, and Luther as George Cornelius, while the films include The Long Kiss, Miracle at Midnight and Ordinary Decent Criminal as well as Mr. Ryder in Brideshead Revisited, Magnus Crome in the 2018 film Mortal Engines.

In the 1980s, Patrick Malahide wrote two television screenplays, The Writing on the Wall, produced in 1996, and the police drama Reasonable Force (1988). The first is a political thriller involving a terrorist bombing on a Royal Air Force base in Germany, drew on Patrick's experiences as a door-to-door salesman there. While working on this screenplay, Malahide got journalist credentials with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and spent a great deal of time in Brussels, Belgium, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters, doing research.

Malahide has also been a reader for numerous books on tape, including Sherlock Holmes: Memoirs, Classic Tales of Horror, Inspector Morse: Driven to Distraction, Classic Short Stories (Volumes 5 and 6), Goodnight Mister Tom, Vintage Crime Stories, Classic Railway Murders, The Five Red Herrings, The Naked Country, and Tiger in the Smoke. Patrick has appeared in radio plays, including (as Pastor Manders) Ghosts, (as the prince) The Leopard, (as Percy Phelps) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, (as narrator) The Chinese Garden, (as narrator) Mandala, (as narrator) Post-Captain, The Colour of Blood, The Island of Sheep, and So Long Life. Patrick Malahide has established his own production company, Ryan Films, and develops several of his own scripts. He has also founded the Campaign for the Arts in Bristol and Avon (CABA) in the mid-1980s in direct response to a growing crisis in public funding of the arts in the Bristol area. The Campaign for the Arts in Bristol and Avon successfully forged links between arts groups in all disciplines to provide a united voice in promoting a coherent local government strategy for public funding. Malahide was elected the first chairman of the Campaign for the Arts in Bristol and Avon and was re-elected annually, remaining highly active in the campaign until moving to London in 1991. Malahide is a patron of Queen Margaret's University College Foundation and The Byre Theatre St. Andrews Appeal Fund.

Achievements

• Patrick Malahide has had a lengthy career in cinema including (as Detective Sergeant Chisholmbut) Minder, and The Singing Detective, which he was nominated BAFTA TV Award as Best Actor in 1987. Malahide gained more fame in the global phenomenon Game of Thrones in the role of Balon Greyjoy, and as George Cornelius in Luther. Malahide has written two screenplays: Reasonable Force, and The Writing on the Wall, appeared in numerous theatre and radio plays by such playwrights as Shakespeare, Pinter, Strindberg, and Chekhov, and was a reader for numerous book tapes.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Captain Jack

    (Captain Jack is the true story of irascible and irresisti...)

    1999
  • Quills

    (Quills imagines the final days of the Marquis de Sade as ...)

    2000
  • Comfort And Joy

    (Quirky comedy in which a Scottish DJ grappling with perso...)

    1984
  • A Month in the Country

    (Colin Firth, Kenneth Branagh and John Atkinsons star in t...)

    1987
  • Billy Elliot

    (Billy Elliot is the triumphant and heartwarming story of ...)

    2000
  • Ordinary Decent Criminal

    (Two-time Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey (Casino Jack) ...)

    2000
  • Captain Corelli's Mandolin

    (Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage (The Family Man) and se...)

    2001
  • All the King's Men

    (The loss of the King George V battalion brought the true ...)

    1999
  • The Rocket Post

    (The Rocket Post is a 2004 British drama film directed by ...)

    2006
  • U.S. Marshals

    (Chief Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard (Jones) chases a double-m...)

    1998
  • Murderous Intent

    (In this riveting suspense-thriller, Toni Collette stars a...)

    2006
  • The Long Kiss Goodnight

    (A violent tale of a young mother who awakens after years ...)

    1996
  • Into The Storm

    (This follow-up to The Gathering Storm follows Winston Chu...)

    2009
  • The Beautician And The Beast

    (Wacky Fran Drescher goes to the tiny nation of Slovetzia ...)

    1997
  • A Short Stay in Switzerland

    (A doctor (Julie Walters) goes to Switzerland for an assis...)

    2009
  • Fortress 2: Re-Entry

    (A renegade imprisoned in an outer space maximum-security ...)

    1999
  • The Killing Fields

    (A lone man's struggle for survival amidst the ravages of ...)

    1984
  • Cutthroat Island

    (A female pirate and her companion race against their riva...)

    1995
  • Deacon Brodie

    (A wealthy 18th-century man (Billy Connolly), alleged to h...)

    1997
  • Victoria & Albert

    (Dramatisation of the lives of Queen Victoria and Prince A...)

    2001
  • Brideshead Revisited

    (A poignant story of forbidden love and the loss of innoce...)

    2008
  • Kidnapped

    (Based on Robert Louis Stevenson's novel about the kidnapp...)

    1995
  • The World Is Not Enough

    (Bond takes position as bodyguard of British oil tycoon's ...)

    1999
  • The Abduction Club

    (Rich noblemen are left penniless as the wealth is destine...)

    2002
  • Til There Was You

    (Two strangers, whose paths are always crossing, finally m...)

    1997
  • A Man of No Importance

    (Alfie Byrne is a middle-aged bus conductor in Dublin in 1...)

    1994
  • Mortal Engines

    (Peter Jackson presents a world unlike any you've seen. A ...)

    2018
  • Miracle At Midnight

    (A family helps their neighbors escape the Nazi's.)

    1998
  • Heaven

    (Robert's wife is divorcing him for gambling etc. A strip ...)

    1998
  • Eurotrip

    (Go All the Way with the Extended Trip. Europe will never ...)

    2004

• TV series

  • Amnesia

    (This gripping psychological drama follows Detective Stone...)

    2004
  • Game of Thrones

    (Nine noble families wage war against each other in order ...)

    2011
  • The Paradise

    (Denise moves to the city to work at a glamorous departmen...)

    2012
  • Luther 2019

Views

Quotations: "It's no wonder I grew up with a fascination with accents. Irishman, George Bernard Shaw said that "every time an Englishman opens his mouth, he makes another Englishman despise him." I learned this the hard way and have put it to use ever since."

"If you're brought up in a working-class home and you go to a posh school, you do learn a certain amount about the English and class and that has obviously been a help in what I do. It has left me with a feeling that although I've been brought up in English society, I'm not completely of it."

"I went straight from school to university and back to school again. I noticed that the best teachers were those who had gone out and done something else, then returned to teaching. I remember walking up and down the playing field after school one day, more and more determined to take the plunge into something new, but not sure what."

"I had to choose a stage name because there was another actor named Patrick Duggan in Actors' Equity. I chose Malahide after Malahide Castle where my mother once worked as a cook. I was brought up on tales of my mother walking around the castle late at night accompanied by Irish Wolfhounds; it seemed a wonderful and romantic place."

Membership

• 

  Royal Fowey Yacht Club , United Kingdom

Personality

Physical Characteristics: Patrick Malahide has a height of 6 ft 0½ in or 184 cm.

Quotes from others about the person

• "No praise would be too high for Malahide's performance. He has all the necessary technical equipment: vocally varied but restrained, crystal clear in exposition and feeling, and the physical portrayal, never exaggerated, says much that the words leave out." - The Festival Times.
  
  "Malahide captures impeccably the perfect combination of slightly wild, but indubitably sane, rationality. Consistently enthralling, his delivery never lags, never becomes monotonous. All our sentimental notions of human dignity are swept away in the waves of his assault on our complacency. And in the end, there is nothing left." - Lindsay Paterson, The Scotsman.

Interests

• Sailing

• Sport & Clubs

  Walking

Connections

Patrick Malahide married Rosi Wright on June 10, 1970, but the marriage ended. Then he married Jo Ryan, a photographer. He has two children from the first marriage: Liam and Mairi.

ex-wife:

Rosi Wright

Wife:

Jo Ryan

Son:

Liam Malahide

Daughter:

Mairi Malahide

colleague:

Alfie Allen

colleague:

Gemma Whelan

colleague:

Pilou Asbæk