Career
Tiernan began acting with the Birmingham Youth and moved to London in 1984 to study a three-year diploma in acting at the Drama Centre London run by Christopher Fettes and Yat Malmgren. His theatre work has included Joe Penhall"s The Bullet at the Donmar Warehouse, and a long-term collaboration with the Tony-nominated director Wilson Milam, including Ché Walker"s Flesh Wound at the Royal Court and two critically acclaimed productions of Sam Shepard"s plays: A Lie of the Mind at the Donmar Warehouse and True West at the Bristol Old Victoria In 2008, Tiernan returned to the theatre in Dorota Maslowska"s A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians at the Soho. ing took place from October 2005 to January 2006 in Montreal.
television In 1993, Tiernan appeared in the series Cracker in the episode "To Say I Love You".
In 1997 played Banquo in the Shakespeare adaptation for British Broadcasting Corporation (MacBeth on the Estate) alongside James Frain and Susan Vidler. In 1998, in the British television series Hornblower, he played Bunting in the second episode, "The Examination Foreign Lieutenant".
Other credits in television include Victor Carroon in The Quatermass Experiment, Kim Trent in Life on Mars and Lenny Spearfish in the British Broadcasting Corporation television series Jonathan Creek (2004) "The Curious Tale of Mr Spearfish". In 2005, he played Ben Jonson in A Waste of Shame, a William Shakespeare biopic presented as part of the British Broadcasting Corporation"s ShakespeaRe-Told series.
In 2012, he appeared as Doctor of Science Hunter in British Broadcasting Corporation"s new drama Prisoners" Wives.
Directing Tiernan began working on his directing debut in 2012, with the feature film Dragonfly.