Roma Downey

Roma Downey (born 6 May 1960) is an Irish actress and Emmy nominated producer from Northern Ireland. She played kind-hearted angel Monica on the American TV series Touched by an Angel. Downey received two Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her role on the show. She is currently the executive producer of the television miniseries The Bible on the History channel. She also plays the role of Mother Mary in the series.The Bible shattered sales records in its first week of home video release, selling 525,000 units to become the top-selling TV miniseries of all time. According to the Belfast Telegraph, in 2013 she had a net worth of £220 million, making her one of the richest people in the Republic and Northern Ireland. --- Downey was born and raised in Derry, Northern Ireland, in the Bogside district. She attended Thornhill College. Her mother, Maureen O'Reilly Downey, died from a heart attack at the age of 48 when Downey was 10. Her father, Paddy Downey, was a school teacher by training but worked as a mortgage broker. Her father died when Downey was 20. Originally she planned to be a painter and earned a Bachelor of Arts at Brighton College of Art. She turned her attention to acting, however, and had a classical training attending Drama Studio London, where she performed in plays by Shakespeare, Shaw and Chekhov. She joined the Abbey Players in Dublin and toured the United States in a production of The Playboy of the Western World. The production led to a nomination during the Broadway run for the Helen Hayes Best Actress Award in 1991. She also starred on Broadway in "The Circle" with Sir Rex Harrison and also at the Roundabout Theater and The Public Theater in New York City. Downey played the role of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis in the 1991 U.S. TV miniseries A Woman Named Jackie which won the Emmy award for Outstanding Miniseries in 1992. --- Her role as Jacqueline Kennedy led to her most famous role, as the angel "Monica", on the CBS series Touched by an Angel, opposite Della Reese, which ran from 1994 to 2003. She earned one nomination and one win at the TV Guide awards for favorite actress and also garnered two Emmy Award nominations and two Golden Globe nominations. Downey has said the character Monica interested her because it was a strong female role, which were "few and far between" and for its spiritual aspects. --- On May 24, 2011, Downey and husband Mark Burnett announced they were producing a 10-hour docudrama for the History channel, The Bible, based on stories from the Bible scheduled to air in 2013. They began planning it in 2009 and lined up their own financing. The full production cost was $22 million USD. Downey and Burnett wanted to stay as true to the content in the Bible as possible so they put together a wide variety of pastors and academics to review the script and filming. For example, they worked with Pastors Joel Osteen and Rick Warren and academics such as Craig A. Evans and Mark Goodacre. As of March 25, 2013, The Bible series has been watched by over 80 million viewers during its first three installments. The show has been the number one downloaded TV show in iTunes and ranked number 2 on Amazon's best sellers in movies and TV. The Bible will have a theatrical release containing “recut scenes and extra stuff” from the record breaking television event and could be released as early as this fall. The Bible has been nominated for the 2013 Primetime Emmy Award, Outstanding Miniseries or Movie. It is Downey and Burnett's first such collaboration as producers. Downey is playing the role of Mother Mary, the mother of Jesus in the later stages of his life. The Bible was filmed in 2012 in Morocco. --- She is married to television producer/entrepreneur Mark Burnett. Her only child, Reilly Marie Downey Anspaugh, is from her previous marriage to director David Anspaugh. Reilly is named after her grandmother, Maureen O'Reilly Downey. On Thanksgiving Day 2006, Burnett proposed to Downey during a family vacation in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. They wed on 28 April 2007 in their Malibu home. Her Touched By An Angel co-star, Della Reese, officiated at the wedding. Downey is a "Smile Ambassador" for the non-profit organization Operation Smile which provides surgeries for children around the world who were born with severe cleft lip and palate. Downey was raised as, and remains, a Roman Catholic. Downey graduated from the University of Santa Monica with a master's degree in spiritual psychology.