A Sheffield-born Etonian became the American cop McNulty in The Wire
Few viewers of The Wire guessed that Baltimore detective Jimmy McNulty was played by an Old Etonian from Sheffield with a Trinity College Dublin degree. Dominic West's accent drew praise, and the role launched a career ranging from Shakespeare on stage to a future king in The Crown.
West was born in Sheffield on 15 October 1969, the sixth of seven children in a family of Irish descent. His mother had acted; his father ran a plastics factory. After Eton he took a gap year herding cattle in Argentina for four months, took a 1993 degree in English from Trinity College Dublin, and finished at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama two years later. He has spoken ruefully about the Eton label in the British press, yet said he would still send his own children there.
His screen debut came as Henry, Earl of Richmond, in Ian McKellen's Richard III, followed by parts in Chicago, 300 and Mona Lisa Smile. The breakthrough was McNulty, played from 2002 to 2008, and he directed an episode of the show too. Later television brought a Golden Globe nomination for The Hour, a BAFTA for playing the murderer Fred West in Appropriate Adult, Noah Solloway in The Affair, Jean Valjean in Les Misérables and Prince Charles in the last two seasons of The Crown, which earned him Globe and Emmy nominations. He turned down Mance Rayder in Game of Thrones because it meant too long away from his family.
The stage keeps pulling him back. He played Iago opposite his Wire colleague Clarke Peters at Sheffield's Crucible, where he later took on Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, and starred in Butley, The River and Les Liaisons Dangereuses in London. In 2024 his Eddie Carbone in A View from the Bridge moved from Bath into the West End.
Odder credits include a voice on the opening track of Eminem's album Relapse, recorded over the phone, and a run of Nationwide adverts as a hapless banker. In December 2013 he reached the South Pole alongside Prince Harry, Alexander Skarsgård and wounded soldiers in a charity trek. He married Catherine FitzGerald in County Limerick in 2010; they have four children, and he also has a daughter from an earlier relationship.
Source: Dominic West
