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Stuart Townsend
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Stuart Townsend (born on December 15, 1972 in Howth, County Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish actor.
Like fellow Irish actor Colin Farrell, he attended the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin where he made his non-professional stage debut in the school's production of Tear Up The Black Sail. His professional stage debut was in 1994's True Lines, directed by John Crowley, who later directed Intermission. True Lines was first performed in Kilkenny; it later moved to the Dublin Theatre Festival and on to Bush Theatre in London.
Townsend's early movie roles were in Irish
short films such as "Godsuit" and "Summertime". His first part in a
feature length
film was
Trojan Eddie, a
1996 UK/Irish co-production. In
1997 he landed a lead role in the
British film
Shooting Fish, which really propelled his career.
After his appearance as the outrageous seducer in the title role of About Adam, he started to be noticed in the United States by critics and the public alike. In the summer of 2000, he briefly returned to the London stage in the Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending, starring as Val Xavier, alongside Helen Mirren as Lady Torrance.
In recent years he has appeared in a number of big budget films including Queen of the Damned, opposite Aaliyah, as the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt; and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as Dorian Gray.
In
2005 Townsend starred alongside
Gabrielle Union in
Night Stalker, the
2005 remake of the
1974 ABC TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. He played the part of Carl Kolchak, an investigative reporter looking into his wife's murder.
Night Stalker was abruptly cancelled by ABC after six episodes due to bad viewing figures.
Trivia
- He left the Peter Jackson production of the The Lord of the Rings after just four days of filming. He maintains that he was miscast and was too young for the role of Aragorn. He was replaced by Viggo Mortensen. Interestingly, within the Richard III Society, Stuart Townsend became the most commonly considered actor to possibly portray the King in a sympathetic biopic after Mortensen was written off as too old. Townsend does hold a startling resemblance to the arch-top portrait of Richard III.
- His father, Peter Townsend, was a pro golfer.
- There is quite a big age difference between Stuart and his siblings. His brother, Dylan, is 13 years younger than him and his sister, Chloe, is 15 years younger,
- He has a half-brother named Hugo and half-sister named Ella; his father remarried in 1997 after Stuart's mother died in 1994.
- He appeared in an episode of Will & Grace where he played a pansexual employee of Karen Walker's.
- Stuart Townsend is also the name of a character in Anne Rice's The Witching Hour
- He also dated actress Parker Posey
- Townsend has dated actress Charlize Theron since 2001; they now live in Los Angeles
Selected filmography
