17 Facts About Orla Brady

Orla Brady was born on 28 March 1961 and is an Irish theatre, television, and film actress born in Dublin.

Orla Brady began her career with the Balloonatics Theatre Company as a touring performer, later gaining her first minor role in television as a bank clerk in the series Minder in 1993.

Orla Brady appeared in the 2020 list of Ireland's greatest film actors, published by The Irish Times.

Orla Brady was born on 28 March 1961 in Dublin, the daughter of Catherine and Patrick Orla Brady, the second of four children.

Orla Brady lived in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland, from birth until the age of seven.

Orla Brady was educated at a Loreto Convent in Wicklow, and an Ursuline Convent in Dublin.

Orla Brady began training in performance in 1986, with a year in Paris; she studied at L'Ecole Philippe Gaulier, and secured a place at Marcel Marceau's Ecole Internationale de Mimodrame de Paris.

Orla Brady began her career touring with Balloonatics Theatre Company, in productions of Hamlet and Finnegans Wake.

Orla Brady was cast in a minor TV role in 1993 and a first film part in 1994 ; her first professional stage work was in the role of Ghislane in Stephen Poliakoff's Blinded by the Sun, performed at the Royal National Theatre in England in 1996, and she has since developed a career based on both Irish and British located theatre, television and film.

Orla Brady played one of four main characters in the BBC's drama series Mistresses, Siobhan Dillon, a lawyer who struggled to maintain her relationship with husband Hari while having an affair.

Since moving to California in 2001, Orla Brady has appeared in Family Law, where she played Naoise O'Niell, a series that ran for 3 years on CBS.

Orla Brady appeared as Meredith Gates, a fleecing art collector who herself is conned in the first series of the British series Hustle.

Orla Brady appeared in a special production in the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who, the 25 December 2013 Christmas special, The Time of the Doctor.

Orla Brady had a recurring role in a season of the American Horror Story franchise, portraying Dr Hopple in American Horror Story: 1984, the ninth season of the FX horror anthology television series.

In 2020, Orla Brady was listed as number 43 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's 50 greatest film actors.

In 2001, Orla Brady moved to Los Angeles, where she met English photographer Nick Brandt, whom she married in December 2002 in the Chyulu Hills of Kenya.

Orla Brady admitted in an interview that she originally left Ireland as she found it a repressive place with little opportunity.