Born in 1961, Glasgow, Scotland, leading Scottish actor Robert Carlyle
had a bohemian upbringing that saw him and his father travel the world
moving from commune to commune after his mother walked out of their
lives. After spending his latter teenage years working as a painter
and decorator he won a scholarship to the Royal Scottish Academy of
Music and Drama, and had his first part in a Glasgow Arts Centre amateur
drama. He first came to notice as TV policeman Hamish Macbeth. Carlyle
won international acclaim when he his film debut in Ken
Loach's Riff
Raff (1990), and re-teamed with the director on the Nicaraguan saga
Carla's Song
(1997).
Carlyle's career has rocketed since baring all as an unemployed Sheffield
steel-worker in The
Full Monty (1997), Carlyle was critically acclaimed for roles in
Priest (1994) and as the sociopath Begbie in Danny
Boyle’s Trainspotting
(1996). Carlyle followed these by casting himself as a cannibalistic
pioneer in Ravenous
(1999), the shaven-headed baddie Renard in The
World is Not Enough (1999), a brief cameo in The
Beach (2000), and appearing in Angela's
Ashes, the true story of Frank McCourt's youth in poverty stricken
Limerick. More recently he’s starred opposite Samuel L. Jackson in buddy
flick The 51st
State (2001), and Shane Meadows’
Once Upon a Time
in the Midlands.
