Domhnall Gleeson

Biography and Personal Life

The Actor’s Upbringing and Education

Gleeson was born in 1983 in Dublin on May 12, making him 42 years old at the time of writing. The future actor grew up in Malahide, with growing up being the perfect description given that Domhnall Gleeson height is 185 cm or 6’1”. It’s safe to say that he stands out in a crowd.

In his early years, Domhnall was influenced by his father and his family when it came to his career, studying media arts at Dublin Institute of Technology. He’d eventually realise that he was destined to be in front of the camera as opposed to behind it and would start responding to casting calls, leading to his first stage appearances at Malahide Theatre and the occasional film and TV role. Success would soon follow, with the actor earning a Tony Award nomination in 2006 for The Lieutenant of Inishmore. 

Personal Life and Family

Speaking of the Dublin Institute of Technology, that’s where he met the woman who’d eventually go on to become Domhnall Gleeson wife. Juliette Bonass is an Irish film producer with an impressive career of her own, and the two of them are a match made in heaven. 

With that said, they keep their private life… well, private. We know that they were married in 2023, but other than that, we don’t know a huge amount about what goes on behind closed doors. That doesn’t really matter, though, because they both let their work speak for itself. 

For example, Bonass is known for producing Glassland, Rosie and A Date for Mad Mary. Both of them have a reputation for being hard workers, making it all the more impressive that the two are able to make time for each other alongside their careers.

Early Movie Career (2005–2011)

Let’s move on to Domhnall Gleeson movies, which started out slowly as a natural development from his theatre work and which ended up making his name. His film debut was in Boy Eats Girl, a 2005 horror-comedy about a teenage boy who declares his love for his girlfriend, dies and then comes back to life as a zombie. Chaos and hilarity ensue.

From there, his early career continued with Perrier’s Bounty in 2009 and Never Let Me Go in 2010, the latter of which was his first serious dramatic role and which showed just how versatile an actor he could be. The following year, in 2011, he was awarded the prestigious European Film Promotion (EFP) Shooting Star award at the Berlinale International Film Festival. He’d come a long way from his first indie film.

First Major Fame and Harry Potter Role

If you’re a millennial, there’s a good chance that if you recognise Gleeson’s face, it’s because of the Domhnall Gleeson Harry Potter appearances, where he played the role of Bill Weasley in parts one and two of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. He appeared alongside French actress and fashion model Clémence Poésy, who took on the role of Fleur Delacour.

The Potter movies were (and still are) huge, especially as the final instalments in an iconic franchise, and the two final Hogwarts films introduced Gleeson to a wider, mainstream audience. It helped that Domhnall understood the significance of the role and delivered a gripping performance that did the character justice. Fans loved him, and so did casting teams. All of a sudden, bigger projects were coming his way.

Rise to Critical Recognition (2012–2015)

Ex Machina (2014)

The next big step in our story is the Domhnall Gleeson Ex Machina appearance, in which he played a computer programmer called Caleb Smith, starring opposite Oscar Isaac and Alicia Vikander in the Alex Garland movie. The 2014sci-fi thriller follows the story of a computer programmer who’s asked to administer the Turing test, which aims to judge whether a machine is able to appear “human” to an intelligent robot. Interestingly, it was written and directed by Alex Garland, who also wrote 28 Days Later, which featured Gleeson’s father Brendan alongside fellow Irish actor Cillian Murphy.

Ex Machina is interesting because it was ahead of its time in many ways, pre-empting many of the discussions on AI that we’re having today. It was also visually stunning, which is one of the reasons why it won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Gleeson, meanwhile, earned a well-deserved Saturn Award nomination for Best Actor. 

The Revenant and Brooklyn (2015)

Next up there was Brooklyn 2015, another of the well-received Domhnall Gleeson films that secured an award nomination. In this case, Domhnall was nominated for a BIFA for Best Supporting Actor due to his performance as Tony Fiorello.

Not one to rest on his laurels, Domhnall also appeared alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant during the same year. He played Andrew Henry in the critically acclaimed Iñárritu movie, showing his versatility by appearing in a well-received sci-fi movie and an award-winning period drama in the same year. 

These two performances helped to confirm Gleeson’s status as an A-lister, forcing the industry to sit up and to pay attention to him as a standout star of Irish cinema, comparable to names like Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan and Colin Farrell.

Star Wars and Mainstream Success

From one major franchise (Harry Potter) to another, it’s time for us to pick up the thread of the Domhnall Gleeson Star Wars story. Gleeson was fortunate enough to land the villainous role of General Hux, an important character throughout the Star Wars sequel trilogy that began with The Force Awakens in 2015 and continued through The Last Jedi (2017) and The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

The role was an interesting one for Domhnall because he played a villain, which required a different kind of approach and additional preparation for him to get into the right headspace. Hux isn’t just any villain; he’s one of the main antagonists of the First Order.

While all of this was happening, he was also appearing as Winnie the Pooh creator A. A. Milne in 2017’s Goodbye Christopher Robin, another very different role to what he’d been used to. He’s never been one to risk being typecast.

TV Work (2022–2025)

2022: The Patient

In 2022, we saw a return to television with the Domhnall Gleeson The Patient role in which he played serial killer Sam Fortner. The limited series, which was distributed by FX and Hulu, saw Gleeson’s character being treated by a therapist who was played by Steve Carell.

It was a difficult role to play, even for someone like Gleeson who’d already taken on an impressive variety of different roles. Playing a killer is never easy, and Fortner was a complex character with unclear motivations. Still, Gleeson did a great job of things, which is why he earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Limited Series.

The Patient ran for ten episodes, with the final episode airing on October 25, 2022. It was well received by fans and critics alike, earning an impressive 89% on Rotten Tomatoes.

2025: The Paper

The next major turning point is the Domhnall Gleeson 2025 project The Paper, a new series from a familiar team. It’s particularly interesting given that Gleeson had recently worked with Steve Carell.

That’s because The Paper is simultaneously a spin-off and a sequel to The Office, which itself was based on Ricky Gervais’s popular sitcom of the early 2000s. Created by Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, The Paper sees the same documentary team behind The Office visit Toledo, Ohio to investigate the Toledo Truth Teller, a historic newspaper that’s trying to stay relevant in 2025.

This latest project consisted of ten episodes, which was just enough to leave fans wanting more. The good news is that Peacock has announced that there will be a second series of the popular TV show.

Approach to Acting and Legacy

Throughout the years, Gleeson has shown a penchant for the more complex roles, preferring to play psychologically complex and morally ambiguous characters like Caleb Smith and Sam Fortner. Fortunately for us, he has an engaging acting style that has enabled him to be believable in every role he’s played.

As well as being a versatile actor, he’s also a writer-director, most notably with 2010’s Your Bad Self. For most fans, though, he’s known as being the talented son of Brendan Gleeson and one of the most interesting actors in Irish cinema.

When we look back on his career in years to come, the five Domhnall Gleeson awards and 20+ nominations from throughout his career will play an important part in his legacy. But for Gleeson, it’s the movies and the performances themselves that he’ll be remembered for, and he likely wouldn’t want it any other way.