Colin O’Donoghue

Colin O’Donoghue married his long time girlfriend, Helen, a schoolteacher, in 2009, shortly after his appearance and success on ‘The Tudors’. Colin admitted that they had been dating since he was 18 years old. The couple has a son and a daughter.

Colin O’Donoghue was born in County Louth, Ireland, on 26th January 1981, to Con and Mary O’Donoghue. He hails from an extremely religious Roman Catholic family and was raised amidst a very religious atmosphere in the house.

Colin did his early schooling from local schools and later got enrolled to an acting school to learn the nuances of performing arts. He finished two years of the programme in acting and during that time, became a part of several plays and did other acting stints to sustain. He also went to Paris for a brief period to learn French.

Music became his driving force through life and he admits that he was way more passionate towards music than acting as a kid. He and his brother, Allen, used to practice signing and playing guitar for hours together.

Upon graduating from the acting school, Colin embarked on an acting career professionally which mostly consisted of doing theatre, and Television shows later in Ireland. His acting prowess gained him enough recognition and considering the relatively small size of Irish entertainment industry, Colin quickly became popular and started appearing in Television movies.

Some of his key theatre performances include ‘Sky Road’, ‘Othello’ and ‘Outline Islands’. Although the theatre roles weren’t enough to sustain him financially, but Colin received experience and accolades through his performances, which eventually helped him grab auditions in several big TV shows and TV movies along with many short films.

Apart from his good looks, his acting prowess was accepted by the audiences widely and he appeared in a TV movie titled ‘Home for Christmas’, which turned out to be the life turing stint of his professional career. At the 1st Irish Film and Television Awards, Colin received the ‘Best New Talent’ award, which was a big deal and rightly so, it got him in touch with the talent managers in the neighbouring UK.

Meanwhile, back in Ireland, Colin Kept appearing in TV shows such as ‘Rebel’, ‘Love is the Drug’, ‘Proof’ and ‘Fair City’ and short films ‘Call Girl’ and ‘24/7’. In 2009, Colin grabbed one of the first big roles of his career with a television series ‘The Tudors’. The series, a historical fiction, was very popular in Europe and Colin portrayed the role of Duke Philip of Bavaria in the season 3 of the show.

In 2010, he finally decided to make a switch to Hollywood after his inability to get meaty roles back in his home country. Before leaving, he recorded the audition for some big Hollywood films and sent it across. He started auditioning for several roles in big and small films and eventually ended up grabbing the role of a priest in Anthony Hopkins starrer horror film ‘The Rite’ in 2011.