Robert Carlyle (1961-) b. Glasgow, Scotland.

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 (1999), 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 (2002). In 2007 he took the lead in 28 Weeks Later (2007), the uninspired follow-up to Danny Boyle’s excellent low-budget sci-fi horror 28 Days Later (2002).