Ciarán Hinds: All You Need To Know About The Actor Who Was The King Beyond The Wall

“Game of Thrones” despite its terrible ending has continued to maintain its place at the topmost rungs in the ladder of the popular culture of the last decade. It gave us Jon Snow, the dragon queen, Cersei, Arya who went on to discover America, giants, evil walking in two feet, evil geniuses and grandmasters, a world where your life is worth a little less than a bronze goblet, and the king beyond the wall. And one thousand other things. One of the best scenes of “A Game of Thrones” – there are a ton of them, but one which stood out in season five is the conversation between Jon Snow and Mance Rayder the King beyond the wall and ruler of giants and the Free Folks whom the Andals call the wildlings. Stannis has Mance Rayder in captivity and would execute him except he bends to the kneel and have his people fight for Stannis in his quest for the Iron Throne. In leaving his cell, Jon Snow said, “I think you are making a terrible mistake” to which the replied, “The freedom to make my own mistakes was all I have wanted.” This man, that king beyond the wall was portrayed by an actor named Ciarán Hinds and this post is about him.

Ciarán Hinds was born in 1953

Ciarán (pronounced “Keeran”) Hinds was born in February 1953, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was born to a family home where his father was a doctor and his mother, a schoolteacher and an amateur actress. He was the only son among four sisters. He attended Holy Primary School, St. Malachy’s College, and Queen’s University, all in Belfast. Ciarán was a dancer and involved in other dramatic endeavors in his youth. It was his involvement with the arts that see him abandon his law degree in Queen’s and proceeded to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts London where he learned the acting ropes. It was said that it was his mother who was the real influence in his career.

In 1976, Hinds left his country for mainland UK and began acting with the Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre. About this, years later, he would say, “My feet always danced to Irish traditional music, but I was very glad to get out of the North of Ireland in the mid-Seventies when it was really closed and tight and relentlessly unforgiving.” But he says that my soul is still Irish. He is the complete “Irishman”.

Ciarán Hinds is 67 years old.

Ciarán Hinds – Career

Ciarán Hinds is a theatre, TV, and film actor in nearly equal proportions. On his appearances in the theatre, he said, “I come from theatre and I always go back every couple of years.” His film career began in 1981 when he played the role of King Lot of the Arthurian legend in the film “Excalibur”. There was an inexplicable eight years absence on the screen for him. Perhaps this absence is not so inexplicable because Hinds continued to appear in the theatres in Glasgow, Dublin, London, and his home town, Belfast. He acted in classical plays such as “Waiting for Godt” by Samuel Beckett, “The Mother” by Berlot Bretch, “Arms and the Man” by George Bernard Shaw, all those kinds of plays that your English tutor gushed over at high school.

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When he made the return to the screen, it was the crime drama “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” in 1989. Hinds is mostly a period actor. He was Captain Frederick Wentworth in 1995 film “Persuasion” based on the novel by Jane Austen. He was in Michael Apted 2006 film “Amazing Grace” then played King Herod in “The Nativity Story” in the same year. In 2011, he played Aberforth Dumbledore in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Harrows – Part 2” for which he later said, “I’ll tell you, being on set on ‘Harry Potter’ was nerve-wracking. It was surreal to be in a room with those three kids, all of whom know exactly what they’re doing.”

On the TV aspect, he was on ITV’s 1997 movie “Jane Eyre”. Between 2009 and 2012, he was DCS James Langton in the “Above Suspicion” series based on Anna Travis. There is no type of character Hinds hadn’t played on the screen. In 2006, he was Julius Caesar in the British, American, and Italian collaboration show “Rome”. He once played the character of Albert Camus on HBO, BBC Two, and Rai 2. And he was, in 2004, the ill-fated character Henry Henchard the character in “Mayor of Casterbridge” by Thomas Hardy who sold his wife and kids in a moment of drunken madness.

Partner and kid

Ciarán Hinds is what IMDb called “a long-term, committed relationship” with the actress Hélène Patarot. Hélène Patarot is a French citizen of Vietnamese descent. The two met in the set of the TV movie “The Mahabharata” which is the western version of the Hindu epic of the same title without the article and which was on the stage for nine hours. but had to be cut into six hours for TV.

In 1991, Ciarán and Hélène were blessed with a baby girl they named Aoife which is the Irish Gaelic version of Eve. The family lives in Paris, France.

Image source: The Independent