seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Nora-Jane Noone


by Leave a comment

Birth of Actress Nora-Jane Noone

Irish actress Nora-Jane Noone is born in Galway, County Galway, on March 8, 1984. In 2020, The Irish Times ranks her 47th on its list of the greatest Irish film actors of all time. She makes her screen debut in her breakthrough role film The Magdalene Sisters (2002), and has since been nominated three times at the IFTA Film & Drama Awards for her work in three films: The Descent (2005),  Savage (2009) and Wildfire (2020).

Noone’s other credits include Doomsday (2008), Ella Enchanted (2004), The Ipcress File (2022), and Hidden Assets (2023).

Noone grows up in Upper Newcastle, Galway. She trains for two years at the Performing Arts School in Galway, and is a proficient musician (piano to Grade 7 level) and dancer. Her previous acting roles before starting her acting career, are in school and amateur productions and pantomime.

Noone graduates in 2004 from NUI Galway with a degree in Science, and then moves to London.

Noone makes her professional film debut playing Bernadette in the Peter Mullan written and directed film The Magdalene Sisters (2002). The film wins the Best Film prize in the 2002 Venice Film Festival, and is nominated as Best British Picture at the British Academy Film Awards. For her performance as Bernadette, she is nominated for British Newcomer of the Year at the 2004 London Film Critics’ Circle Awards, alongside Mullan, who wins best director and best film of the year.

In 2005, Noone is nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Feature Film for her role as Holly in The Descent (2005) at the 3rd Irish Film & Television Awards. She is nominated in 2010 for Best Actress in a Supporting Role Film at the 7th Irish Film & Television Awards for her role in the film Savage (2009).

In 2008, Noone co-stars in Doomsday, directed by Neil Marshall, Speed Dating and Ella Enchanted. Other work includes the short films News for the Church written and directed by Andrew McCarthy and The Listener, directed by Michael Chang. She also records Walking at Ringsend for BBC Radio 4. In 2008, she appears in Insatiable.

Noone also appears in The Descent Part 2, The Day of the Triffids and The Runaway and she co-stars in episodes 1–6 in season one of Jack Taylor. In 2013 she also begins writing a film short.

In 2020, Noone receives a nomination Best Actress in a Leading Role Film at the 17th Irish Film & Television Awards for her performance as Lauren in Wildfire. In 2022, she is involved in the relaunch of The Ipcress File, as Dr. Karen Newton.

In 2023, Noone returns to Ireland as Detective Sergeant Claire Wallace in the RTÉ crime series Hidden Assets.

In 2023, Noone moves back to live in Galway while filming Hidden Assets. She and her husband, fellow actor Chris Marquette, have a daughter in 2020. This is one reason that she decides to return to Ireland.


by 3 Comments

Brendan Foley, Writer, Film Producer & Director

Brendan Foley is a Northern Irish writer, film producer and director. Raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he has written feature film and TV series scripts for producers and studios in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hollywood, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Poland, South Africa, China and Thailand. He writes and produces the 2005 action-thriller Johnny Was, starring Vinnie Jones, Eriq La Salle and Patrick Bergin. The film wins awards including Audience Awards and Best Feature Awards from six film festivals.

Foley’s most recent work includes Cold Courage, a TV series thriller for Lionsgate, Viaplay and Luminoir shot in Europe in 2019 and The Man Who Died, a series for Elisa-Viaplay.

Foley writes, produces and directs The Riddle in 2006, starring Jones, Sir Derek Jacobi and Vanessa Redgrave. In September 2007, The Riddle becomes the world’s first feature film to be released as a DVD premiere by a national newspaper. The UK’s The Mail on Sunday buys UK DVD rights and distributes 2.6 million copies, making the film one of the most widely watched independent films in the UK.

During 2006–07, Foley writes and directs Assault of Darkness, a satirical horror film set in rural Ireland, starring Jones, Jason Barry and Nora-Jane Noone. It is released by Lionsgate in the United States on DVD in 2009. He co-creates and is a writer on Shelldon, a children’s environmental animated TV series on NBC (2010–12) and Byrdland (five seasons of animated TV series in Asia with GMM Grammy).

In 2015, Foley starts developing a new TV detective series for BBC Television, Farmoor (makers of The Fall) and Northern Ireland Screen (UK home of Game of Thrones) and, in 2016, he develops Tunnel Kings, a mini-series on World War II POW “escape-artists” for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Dream Street, Canada. He completes pilot scripts for SOS, a new eco-thriller series by Finnish producers Luminoir, and Kvenland, set in the Dark Ages. Previously he writes the pilot for drama Dr. Feelgood for Monday TV (Denmark).

Cold Courage, described as a Nordic noir series involving Finnish characters in present-day London made by Finnish producers Luminoir for Lionsgate and Viaplay, shot in London, Dublin, Belgium and Finland in 2019. Actor John Simm tells Variety that he is attracted to the series by the quality of the writing and the fact that it is a pan-European thriller.

In 2019, Foley is attached to produce an adaptation of Freeman Wills Crofts‘ Inspector French novels.

In 2025, Foley is Writer-Creator and Executive Producer for Sherlock & Daughter, a drama series starring David Thewlis and Blu Hunt for The CW, WarnerBrosDiscovery UK, Federation, Starlings and StoryFirst (UK).

Foley has written books for U.S. and UK publishers. Under The Wire, a World War II POW escape drama, which he writes along with its subject, pilot William Ash, is published by  Random House, London and St. Martin’s Press, New York, in 2005 and 2006. It becomes a best-seller, reaching number one on Amazon UK‘s history and biography charts. In 2018/19, a related TV series is developed as a future miniseries by CBC in Canada and Northern Ireland Screen.

Foley’s next book, Archerfield, a novel, published in 2015, covers 16,000 years of history in one square mile of Scotland.

Foley is a member of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, a Fellow of the British Association of Communicators in Business, and is made an honorary life member of the National Union of Journalists in June 2006.