Eva Birthistle

Eva Birthistle
Curt Truninger and Eva Birthistle on the set of The Rendezvous in Toronto.
Born	(1974-01-01) 1 January 1974 (age 43) Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland
Occupation	Actress

Eva Birthistle (born 1 January 1974) is an Irish actress, best known for her role in Ae Fond Kiss.... She won the London Film Critics Circle British Actress of the Year Award in 2004, and has twice won the IFTA Best Actress in a Leading Role (Film) award.

Birthistle was born in Bray, County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland, but moved with her family to Derry, Northern Ireland when she was 14. She was raised Catholic but attended Foyle College. As a teenager, she went to Dublin to study acting at The Gaiety School of Acting.

In 1995, she got her first TV role as Regina Crosbie in the serial Glenroe. She stayed for three years until 1998. 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. In 2002, Eva appeared in two dramas about Bloody Sunday: the documentary-style TV drama Bloody Sunday, starring James Nesbitt, and Sunday, written by Jimmy McGovern.

In 2003, she appeared in the TV series Trust before starring as Roisin Hanlon in the Ken Loach movie Ae Fond Kiss... (2003–04), which won her the 2005 London Critics Circle Film Award as "British Actress of the Year". She appeared in Breakfast on Pluto, Imagine Me & You and Save Angel Hope (by Lukas Erni) in 2005, and in Brian Kirk's Middletown in 2006. She starred as human rights lawyer Jane Lavery in the TV conspiracy drama The State Within in 2006. In late 2007, she featured as Rembrandt's wife Saskia van Uylenburg in the historical drama, Nightwatching by Peter Greenaway.