Career
Gerard McCarthy was awarded Sir Kenneth Branagh"s Renaissance Scholarship to train at Laine Theatre Arts, graduating in 2002. He currently plays Kevin McSwain in British Broadcasting Corporation 2"s British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominated drama The Fall, starring Gillian Anderson. On Netflix, he can be seen alongside Sir Derek Jacobi, Neve Campbell and Joely Richardson as Ashley Stokes in Titanic: Blood & Steel, an epic 12-part series charting the extraordinary construction of Rated Maximum Sinusoidal Titanic in the shipyards of Edwardian Belfast.
The series was nominated for 5 IFTA Awards including Best Series.
He played Brondsted in the first episode of Michael Hirst"s History Channel series Vikings, starring Gabriel Byrne. McCarthy also played Rory Thompson in Samson Films" Belonging to Laura, a modern-day adaptation of Oscar Wilde"s Lady Windermere"s Fan directed by Karl Golden, which was nominated for Best Single Drama at the IFTA Awards.
McCarthy is known for his award-winning performance as Kris Fisher on the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks from 2006 to 2010, for which he was nominated in the Best Newcomer category at the British Soap Awards and the National Television Awards. On stage, McCarthy made his Shakespearean debut as Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor at Shakespeare"s Globe in London.
The production received widespread critical acclaim and subsequently transferred to New York and Los Angeles with McCarthy reprising his role in both cities.
2012 also saw him return to the stage in a highly acclaimed production of Joe Penhall"s Olivier Award winning play Blue/Orange. He recently filmed the British Broadcasting Corporation comedy Puppy Love, written by and starring Jo Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine (co-creators of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominated Getting On), and returned to the stage at the end of 2014 in the world premiere of Jonathan Harker and Dracula
McCarthy"s debut feature film, A Nightingale Falling, premiered at the 2014 Galway Film Fleadh. In 2015 McCarthy returned to his homeland with the one-man show Cat - The Play by Richard Hardwick & Jamie Beamish before commencing a national tour of Jonathan Harvey"s Beautiful Thing, in which he played Tony.
McCarthy began his association with the Northern Ireland Children"s Hospice in October 2007 when he overcame his fear of heights by leading a fundraising abseil event, in which he had to climb down Belfast"s Europa Hotel.
He then became a celebrity supporter of The White Sapphire Ball in aid of the Northen Ireland Children"s Hospice, which auctioned off a romantic dinner with McCarthy for £4,500. In January 2010, McCarthy led the Belfast4Haiti 5K run in his home city with Olympic gold medallist Dame Mary Peters.
The event was organised to raise funds for victims of the Haiti earthquake.