Orla Brady

Orla Brady (born 28 March 1961) is an Irish theatre, television, and film actress born in Dublin. Named in 2020 by The Irish Times as one of Ireland's greatest actors, she has received seven IFTA Award (Irish Film & Television Academy) nominations, a Saturn Award nomination, the Abbey Theatre Award, and Best Actress from the Monte Carlo International Film Festival.

Brady's diverse television credits include Into the Badlands (2016-2019), Mistresses (2008-2010), Star Trek: Picard (2022), Bosch: Legacy (2025), Fringe (2008-2013), Banished (2015), Doctor Who (2013), American Odyssey (2015), American Horror Story (2018), and VisionQuest (2026). On film, Brady's credits include her Award-winning performance in A Love Divided (1999), The Luzhin Defence (2000), Silent Grace (2001), The Foreigner (2017), Rose Plays Julie (2019), and opposite Anthony Hopkins in Freud's Last Session (2023).

Brady trained at École Philippe Gaulier in Paris before an extensive stage career in Dublin and London, starring at the Royal National Theatre, the Abbey Theatre, the Gate Theatre, and on the West End. In 2019, She won the Abbey Theatre Award for her performance in On Broken Wings.

Early life and education Orla Brady was born on 28 March 1961 in Dublin, Efn|Doctor Who: The Complete History states that Brady was born in Bray, County Wicklow.

Brady began training in performance in 1986, with a year in Paris; and secured a place at Marcel Marceau's . As she spoke of the time in interview, "there was a lot of clowning around, buffoonery and fencing. It was then that my own style kind of blossomed."

Notable feature film work has included The Foreigner (2017) with Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan, Rose Plays Julie (2019) with Aiden Gillen, The Price of Desire (2015), A Love Divided (1999) and Silent Grace (2001).

She began her career touring with Balloonatics Theatre Company, in productions of Hamlet and Finnegans Wake. and Natasha in a 1990 production of Three Sisters, both at the Gate Theatre. After moving to London, she played Kate in Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come!, which later transferred from the King's Head Theatre to the West End.

Since moving to California in 2001, Brady has also appeared in Family Law, where she played Naoise O'Niell, a series that ran for 3 years on CBS. She also starred in Nip/Tuck, a US drama about plastic surgeons (in which she played Dr. Jordan), and starred as Claire Stark in Shark (2008). She also appeared as Meredith Gates, a fleecing art collector who herself is conned in the first series of the British series Hustle. In late 2013, she appeared as the Countess Vera Rossakoff in the television adaptation of The Labours of Hercules, part of the final series of Agatha Christie's Poirot alongside David Suchet. Brady appeared in a special production in the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who, In 2014, she filmed Banished, playing Anne Meredith.

In 2015, Brady appeared as architect Eileen Gray in Irish director Mary McGuckian's The Price of Desire,

As of 2022, Brady has had a recurring role in the science fiction television series, Star Trek: Picard, as Laris, wife of the now-deceased Zhaban (Jamie McShane), the two being former members of the Romulan Tal Shiar and now, workers in the wine production and home of Picard at his Chateau.

Awards and recognition Brady won the 1999 award for Best Actress at the Monte Carlo International Film and Television Festival for her starring role as Sheila Cloney in the RTÉ-BBC co-production, A Love Divided . In 2020, Brady was listed as number 43 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's 50 best film actors. Brady was also nominated several times for best actress by the Irish Film and Television Academy.

Modelling images used in artwork In the 1980s, while she was in her mid-20s, Brady modelled for an artists' guide publication. She recalled in 2008 that the studio shoot had paid about £50 for her day's work, at a time when she welcomed the income, with her acting career yet to take off. Photographed in a number of dancing poses, the resulting series of figure studies featuring Brady appeared in the Illustrator's Figure Reference Manual. More than 25 years later, it was noted that one of these images of Brady, posing as part of a dancing couple, was the basis of the main figures in a widely-known painting, The Singing Butler, by artist Jack Vettriano. As stated by Vettriano in 2013, Brady's image had "later inspired [his] most famous painting, The Singing Butler". The identification of the pose study in the Illustrator's Manual with Vettriano's painting led to media reporting that he "owed his composition in part" to that publication. Vettriano, his agent, and Brady herself, have all stated that his work makes use of the image in a way that adheres to norms of artistic practice and was in line with the publisher's intent. (The Guardian article attributes the source of certain figures in Vettriano's paintings to the Illustrator's Manual, but it does not mention Brady as the model for the manual's illustration.)

Theatre Year Title Role Company Director Notes 1992 Rebecca Rebecca de Winter Lyric Players, Belfast Charles Nowosielski play by Daphne Du Maurier

Filmography

Film

Television