Movies

Aidan Murphy (born 24 April 1968), better known as Aidan Gillen (/ˈɡɪlən/), is an Irish actor. He is the recipient of three Irish Film & Television Awards and has been nominated for a British Academy Television Award, a British Independent Film Award, and a Tony Award.

On television, he played Stuart Alan Jones in the Channel 4 series Queer as Folk (1999–2000), Tommy Carcetti in the HBO series The Wire (2004–2008), John Boy in the RTÉ series Love/Hate (2010–2011), Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish in the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011–2017), and Aberama Gold in the BBC series Peaky Blinders (2017–2019).

His film roles include CIA operative Bill Wilson in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Dr. Frank Harte in Calvary (2014), Janson in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015) and Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018), Robert in Sing Street (2016), and John Reid in Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). He also provided the voice and motion capture for Paul Serene in the 2016 video game Quantum Break.

Early life
Gillen was born in the Drumcondra area of Dublin on 24 April 1968, the youngest of six children born to Patricia (née Gillen) and Denis Murphy. He was educated at St. Vincent's C.B.S. in Dublin's Glasnevin neighbourhood.

Gillen began his acting career as a teenager, joining the National Youth Theatre at the age of fourteen and playing Nick Bottom in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Project Arts Centre when he was sixteen. The name Aidan Murphy was already registered so he began using his mother's maiden name as a stage name. He moved to London in 1987 when he was nineteen.