Tom Hickey

Who is Tom Hickey?

Tom Hickey is an Irish actor who has appeared in stage plays, films, and television series.

Born in Kildare, Hickey began his career in 1963 at Deirdre O'Connell's Stanislavski Studio in Dublin where he trained in Stanislavski's system of acting. In 1965, he joined the cast of RTÉ television's new rural drama series, The Riordans. He went on to play the part of Benjy Riordan in the successful serial for the next sixteen years.

On stage, he has favoured parts in the work of modern Irish playwrights such as Tom Murphy, Frank McGuinness, Bernard Farrell, and Marina Carr. In the early 1980s, the playwright Tom MacIntyre asked him to play the lead role in his adaptation of Patrick Kavanagh's poem The Great Hunger. Following the success of that collaboration, he has become an acclaimed interpreter of MacIntyre's work, in such plays as Rise Up Lovely Sweeney, The Gallant John Joe and What Happened Bridgie Cleary.

As a character actor, Hickey has appeared in numerous films, including My Left Foot, Inside I'm Dancing, and Breakfast on Pluto. He has said that he sees his choice of profession as a "vocation", having decided to become an actor when he was five or six years old.