1. Stephen Dillane is best known for his roles as Leonard Woolf in the 2002 film The Hours, Stannis Baratheon in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones and Thomas Jefferson in the HBO miniseries John Adams, a part which earned him a Primetime Emmy nomination.
An experienced stage actor who has been called an "actor's actor", Dillane won a Tony Award for his lead performance in Tom Stoppard's play The Real Thing and gave critically acclaimed performances in Angels in America, Hamlet, and a one-man Macbeth.
Stephen Dillane was born in Kensington, London, to an English mother, Bridget, and an Irish-Australian surgeon father, John Stephen Dillane.
At school, Stephen Dillane began performing in end-of-term plays and had "a certain facility" for funny accents.
Stephen Dillane studied history and politics at the University of Exeter, concentrating on the Russian Revolution, and afterward became a journalist for the Croydon Advertiser.
Stephen Dillane is an experienced theatre actor; his notable roles include Archer in The Beaux' Stratagem, Prior Walter in Angels in America, Hamlet, Clov in Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Uncle Vanya, Henry in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, The Coast of Utopia, and a one-man version of Macbeth directed by Travis Preston.
Stephen Dillane portrayed Horatio in the 1990 film adaptation of Hamlet.
Stephen Dillane played Michael Henderson in Welcome to Sarajevo, a character based on British journalist Michael Nicholson, and the impatient and easily agitated Harker in Spy Game.
Stephen Dillane joined the cast of Game of Thrones in 2011 as Stannis Baratheon, a major contender for the throne of the fictional realm of Westeros.
Stephen Dillane, who had not seen the original series, plays Karl Roebuck, the laid-back, experienced British detective to Poesy's humourless French counterpart.
Stephen Dillane's performance won him an International Emmy Award for Best Actor.
In 2016, besides appearing in the second series of The Tunnel, Stephen Dillane returned to the Donmar Warehouse for a revival of Brian Friel's Faith Healer.
In 2017, Stephen Dillane appeared in two biopics, playing Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax in Joe Wright's Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, and writer William Godwin, the father of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, in the film Mary Shelley.
In October 2023, Stephen Dillane signed the Artists4Ceasefire open letter to Joe Biden, President of the United States, calling for a ceasefire of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.