Actors - Peter Mullan

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Peter Mullan

	Actors - Peter Mullan

Peter Mullan (born in 1960 in Peterhead, Scotland) is a Scottish actor who has been appearing in films since 1990.

Mullan was born in Peterhead in the northeast of Scotland, somewhat removed from the sectarian tensions in the West of Scotland. He was the fifth child of eight born to a devoutly Roman Catholic mother (of Irish extraction) and a Scottish father. The family moved to Cardonald, a working class suburb on the south side of Glasgow where Mullan's father worked as a tool-maker and lab technician. An alcoholic and latterly a sufferer from lung cancer, Charles Mullan became increasingly tyrannical and abusive. When he was 14, Peter tried to poison him with sleeping pills. Peter was a member of a street gang while at high school, and worked as a bouncer in a number of rough south-side pubs. His father died on the day Peter started his studies (in economic history and drama) at Glasgow University.

At University Mullan began acting, and continued stage acting after graduation. A marxist, he was a leading figure in the left-wing theatre movement which blossomed in Scotland during the Conservative Thatcher government, including stints in the 7:84 and Wildcat theatre companies. He had small roles in several Scottish films, including Shallow Grave
, Trainspotting
, and Braveheart
, and a supporting role in Ken Loach's Riff-Raff. He also began to work as a writer and director, producing the short films Close, Good Day for the Bad Guys, and Fridge. His first full-length film Orphans won an award at the Venice Film Festival.

Mullan's appearance in Loach's 1998 film My Name Is Joe
, portraying a recovering alcoholic wrestling with his demons, won Mullan the best actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2002 he returned to directing and screenwriting with the controversial film The Magdalene Sisters
, based on life in an Irish Magdalene Asylum. Mullan won a Golden Lion award from the Venice Film Festival for The Magdalene Sisters
.

Mullan married scriptwriter Annie Swan in 1989; the couple have two children, and continue to live in a tenement in Cardonald.

He campaigned for the Scottish Socialist Party during the 2005 general election, and is a close friend of former SSP convener Tommy Sheridan. He is a strident critic of Tony Blair's New Labour government, telling The Guardian "the TUC and the Labour Party sold us out big style, unashamedly so."

Sources

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Peter Mullan ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Peter Mullan; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay