BAFTA Nominated Actor Who Played Bofur the Dwarf In ‘The Hobbit’, Hosted the British Independent Film Awards, Hosted ‘James Nesbitt’s New Zealand’ Documentary, Won the British Comedy Award & Won the UK National Television Award

James Nesbitt was born and raised in Northern Ireland. His first major TV roles included Ballykissangel and Playing The Field. However, it was playing Adam in the BAFTA award winning Cold Feet that brought him to the attention of a wider audience. This critically-acclaimed drama won James a British Comedy Award in 2000 and a UK National Television Award in 2003.

His range of TV roles since then has included the title role of Tommy Murphy in Murphy’s Law. He was also the actor in that Yellow Pages advert where he tries to cut his son’s hair and ends up sending him to a proper hairdresser to sort out the mess.

In 2002, he played the leading role in the film Bloody Sunday. This won him a BAFTA nomination and Best Actor award at the British Independent Film Awards and the Stockholm Film Festival.

2003 saw BBC Drama produce a modern re-working of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with James playing the main lead, Nick in The Miller’s Tale.

In early 2004 James Nesbitt played the lead in Passer By. This was a drama directed by David Morrisey and written by Tony Marchant.

In 2007 he starred in the critically acclaimed BBC series Jekyll. This gained him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture made for Television. He also received a Rose D’Or nomination for Best Actor.
Films:
James worked on his first film, Hear My Song in the early 1990s. He then worked extensively with director Michael Winterbottom on the films Jude (1996) and Welcome To Sarajevo (1997). James then gained wider recognition in the film Waking Ned Devine (1998), playing the lovable pig farmer, Pig Finn. He starred in Danny Boyle’s movie Millions, and featured in Woody Allen’s Match Point.

In 2008 he played Pontius Pilate in BBC 1’s The Passion and starred in Midnight Man for ITV1. In 2009 James Nesbitt starred in BBC Films’ Five Minutes of Heaven and BAFTA award winning Occupation for BBC1. He co-starred with Martin Sheen as an Irish writer who joins a bereaved father undertaking a pilgrimage in Emilio Estevez’s The Way, released in 2011.

2010 saw James appear in the TV mini-series The Deep and the film Matching Jack. He also filmed Coriolanus alongside Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler. James played Bofur in the epic Hobbit Trilogy directed by Peter Jackson. He also starred in Monroe, a drama series for ITV 1 written by Peter Bowker.
Hosting:
James Nesbitt has hosted the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) for a number of years. He also hosted the Irish Film and Television Awards three times, the Empire Awards and he hosted the star studded GQ Awards for the second time.
In 2012, James filmed James Nesbitt’s Ireland, an eight-part travelogue series for ITV1 which aired in March 2013. That same year he filmed James Nesbitt’s New Zealand. This was a follow up documentary where he travelled the length of the North and South Islands, immersing himself in New Zealand life. The documentary aired on ITV1 on Christmas Day 2013.

2014 saw James star in the second series of Danny Boyle’s Channel 4 comedy Babylon. He also starred in the highly anticipated drama The Missing for BBC1 and Starz Network in the US.

More recently in 2021, James starred in the Netflix series Stay Close. In 2022 he delivered the closing speech at the Ireland’s Future rally in Dublin’s 3Arena.

Why Hire James Nesbitt OBE?