Ian Davies, better known by his stage name Ian Hart, was born on the 8th of October 1964 in Knotty Ash, Liverpool. Having two siblings he was brought up in an Irish Catholic family and grew up on a council estate in Liverpool, with his father working at the Ford factory at Halewood while his mother washed dishes, part-time, in a Blind School kitchen. Having attended Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School in West Derby, he studied drama at the now-defunct Mabel Fletcher College of Music and Drama in Wavertree, now a LIPA free sixth form performing arts college. It was the school play in his last year in High School that gave Ian his first part, in Gogol's 'Government Inspector' and he started going to the Everyman youth theatre, where he was pleased to encounter several local acquaintances who had somehow neglected to mention that they too had got the acting bug. It was here that he adopted 'Hart' as his last name from his Everyman Theatre School associate Barbara Hart. It took over a decade for him to make any money from acting, however and when he first moved to London in 1983 to attend Mountview Drama School, he ended up sleeping rough. He didn't have the money to get a flat, and when he rang about rooms, people would ask if he was Irish and put the phone down. After two months, he dropped out of Mountview and returned to Liverpool. During the lean years to follow, he worked at a factory, a farm and the Post Office. All those jobs were done under the pseudonym Jimmy Morry for tax reasons. Having subsisted throughout the late Eighties and early Nineties on the dole, self-started regional theatre projects, and performing in plays like 'Dog Day Afternoon', 'Pinnocchio Boy' and 'My Beatiful Launderette', he went on to land roles on BBC television programs and odd bits of television, the oddest being the last episode of Albion Market and a three-week cameo role as a traveller, Mick, in 3 episodes of EastEnders (1992).
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His first proper TV role was in 3 episodes of the mini series 'One Summer' (1983) and following one off appearances in 'Travelling Man' (1984), 'The Brothers McGregor' (1985), he was in 3 episodes of 'The Practice' (1986) with his first feature film role, while still a teenager, in 'No Surrender' (1985), in a part, billed in the end credits, as an uncertain mugger. Only small parts followed until, in 1994, Ian had his first big break playing John Lennon in the film 'Backbeat', although he had played John before in the low-budget independent film 'The Hours and Times' (1961), as a slightly younger Lennon during 'The Beatles' 1960-62 Hamburg period. It was as a gawkily magnetic Lennon which quickly won him a second shot at the caustic Beatle. In the brighter, brasher, bigger-budget 'Backbeat', he again brought something to the role that it wouldn't have had without him - cocksure and vulnerable is a tough turn to master. In 1995, he gave a remarkable performance as volunteer Dave Carne, a naïve Liverpudlian bound up in tragic circumstances in Ken Loach's Spanish Civil War film 'Land and Freedom'. The same year, he played psychotic Northern Irish Protestant gangster 'Ginger' in the 1995 Irish-British drama film 'Nothing Personal' (1995), alongside John Lynch, James Frain and Michael Gambon, for which he won the Volpi Cup for best supporting actor at the 52nd Venice International Film Festival. Following a starring role as a shell-shocked young Welshman in 'The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain' (1995), he embarked on a series of projects that read like a who's who list of gritty, socially conscious British films. In 1999 he landed a role which displayed his talent to the fullest. As the private detective Parkis in 'The End of the Affair' (1999), he played a man hired to, in essence, investigate the man who has hired him.
In 2000, he was back in Liverpool as an unemployed shipyard worker, father of three, and as the protagonist Liam in the film of the same name, as his family falls into poverty during the Depression. His best-known role, however, is perhaps that of Professor Quirrell in 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' (2001). He also provided the voice of the CGI-generated face of Lord Voldemort. Then in 2003 he and fellow actor Linus Roache fasted for three months and lost 2 stones each, to achieve a malnourished look for the filming of 'Blind Flight', where he played Middle-Eastern hostage Brian Keenan. In 2004 Ian played Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the film 'Finding Neverland', having already played Doyle's creation Dr Watson in a BBC television film of 'The Hound of the Baskervilles (2002). He also played schizophrenic paparazzo Don Konkey in 20 episodes of the series 'Dirt' (2007-08). In 2009 he played Tom Ripley in BBC Radio Four's adaptations of all five of Patricia Highsmith's 'Ripliad' series and the same year worked alongside John Simm at the Duke of York's Theatre production of Andrew Bovell's play 'Speaking in Tongues'.
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| In The Responder |
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After playing Adolph Hitler in the BBC Drama 'The Man Who Crossed Hitler' (2011), he played John Lennon for a third time in the television play Snodgrass, as a 50 year old Lennon who had left 'The Beatles' before they became successful. He then landed the role of Father Beocca in 'The Last Kingdom' (2015) and remained as a main character until the end of series 4 in 2020. In 2018, he starred as Sailing Master Thomas Blanky in the AMC produced series 'The Terror' before returning to Liverpool to play drug dealer Carl Sweeney in the acclaimed BBC British police drama series 'The Responder' alongside Martin Freeman. Among his thespian peers, the Liverpudlian actor may be considered one of the finest talents of his generation, and yet the general public's response when you mention his name tends to be at best, "Doesn't he play for Leeds?". At worst, "Ian who?".
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2024/07/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-louis.html
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