Eva Birthistle

Eva Birthistle (born 1 January 1974) is an Irish actress, best known for her role in Ae Fond Kiss. She won the London Film Critics Circle British Actress of the Year Award in 2004, and has twice won the IFTA Best Actress in a Leading Role (Film) award. --- Born in Bray, Ireland, the daughter of a farmer, the family moved to Derry, Northern Ireland, when she was 14. She was raised Roman Catholic. As a teenager, Eva went to Dublin to study acting at the The Gaiety School of Acting. On 31 December 2006, she married her long-time partner Raife Burchell from the band Jetplane Landing. They live in Notting Hill, West London. In 1995, she got her first TV role as Regina Crosbie in the serial Glenroe. She stayed for three years until 1998. She was offered her first feature film in 1997, All Souls' Day by Alan Gilsenan. She played a variety of roles in Irish films, including Drinking Crude (1997), co-starring Colin Farrell, and TV movie Miracle at Midnight (1998), with Mia Farrow. In 2002, Eva appeared in two dramas about the same challenging subject, Bloody Sunday: the documentary-style TV drama Bloody Sunday, starring James Nesbitt, and Sunday, written by Jimmy McGovern. In 2003, she appeared in the TV series Trust before starring as Roisin Hanlon in the Ken Loach movie Ae Fond Kiss... (2003-04), which won her the 2005 London Critics Circle Film Award as "British Actress of the Year". She appeared in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto, Ol Parker's Imagine Me & You and Save Angel Hope by Lukas Erni in 2005, and in Brian Kirk's Middletown in 2006.