David Mark Joseph Morrissey (born 21 June 1964) is an English actor and filmmaker. He had numerous small roles in films and television series throughout the 1990s before achieving wider recognition for playing Gordon Brown in The Deal (2003), Stephen Collins in State of Play (2003), The Governor in the third, and fourth seasons of The Walking Dead (2012–2015), and DCS Ian St Clair in Sherwood (2022–present). He has also acted extensively on stage with companies such as the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre.
Morrissey has directed short films and the television dramas Sweet Revenge (2001) and Passer By (2004). His feature-length directorial debut, the television film Don't Worry About Me (2010), premiered on BBC Two. He was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for State of Play and won a Best Actor award from the Royal Television Society for The Deal. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Edge Hill University in 2016.
Early life
David Mark Joseph Morrissey the son of Littlewoods employee Joan and cobbler Joe Morrissey. He has two older brothers named Tony and Paul, and an older sister named Karen. The family lived at 45 Seldon Street in Kensington. Decades later, as part of National Museums Liverpool's Eight Hundred Lives project, Morrissey wrote that the house had been in his family since at least 1900; his grandmother had been married there and his mother was born there. In 1971, the family moved to a larger and more modern house on the new estates at Knotty Ash, while Seldon Street was later demolished.
Morrissey was greatly interested in film, television, and Gene Kelly musicals as a child. He decided to become an actor after seeing a broadcast of Kes on television. At St Margaret Mary's Primary School, he was encouraged by a teacher named Miss Keller, who cast him as the Scarecrow in a school production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz when he was 11 years old. Keller left the school soon after, leaving him without encouragement. His secondary school, De La Salle School, had no drama classes and made him think that the fear of bullying often dissuaded pupils from participating in lessons. On the advice of a cousin, he joined the Everyman Youth Theatre. For the first couple of weeks, he was quite shy and did not join in with the workshops. When he eventually participated, he ended up appearing in their production of Fighting Chance, a play about the 1981 riots in Liverpool. His contemporaries included Cathy Tyson, brothers Mark and Stephen McGann, and Ian Hart, the last being his friend since they were both five years old. He became friends with the McGann brothers and they introduced him to their brother Paul, who was on a break from his studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).
Career
Acting
1980s
In 1982, Morrissey auditioned for One Summer, a television series by Willy Russell for Yorkshire Television and Channel 4 about two Liverpool boys who run away to Wales one summer. Russell had been attached to the Everyman for many years, and Morrissey had seen him while he was working behind the bar downstairs from the theatre, though the two had never been introduced. After filming One Summer for five months, Morrissey went travelling in Kenya with his cousins. When he returned to Britain, One Summer was being broadcast, and he dealt with the new experience of being recognised in public.
After a year at RADA, Morrissey went back to Liverpool to perform in WCPC at the Liverpool Playhouse. In The Guardian, Nicholas de Jongh wrote, "The Bastard, who has the most complex syntax in early Shakespeare, half defeats David Morrissey. His slurred, sometimes unintelligible diction helps to deflate the Bastard, but his bawling rhetoric strikes as mere sham rather than fierce plain speaking." Morrissey also spent time with the National, where he played the title role in Peer Gynt (1990). During this time, he lived on the housing estate in White City, where he and his flatmates were the frequent victims of burglars.
Morrissey's second television role came in 1987 when he played the 18-year-old chauffeur George Bowman, whose obsession with his employer and lover Alma Rattenbury (Helen Mirren) leads him to murder her husband, in an Anglia Television adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play Cause Célèbre. At the end of the 1980s, Morrissey met director John Madden for the first time. Madden was looking for an actor who could portray an ordinary man who turns out to be a mass murderer, in his film The Widowmaker (1990). He knew Morrissey was right for the part in his first audition. Robin Hoods cinema release clashed with that of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). The latter, starring Kevin Costner in the title role, was a box office hit and left Morrissey's version forgotten. Morrissey was out of work in film and television for eight months after it was released. Eventually, he was cast in a leading role as a CID officer in the BBC television drama Clubland (1991). He almost lost the role a week into rehearsals when his appendix ruptured. In order to keep the part, and a flat in Crouch End he had just bought, Morrissey performed while he still had his stitches in.
1990s
His role in The Widowmaker led to him being offered and taking many obsessive character roles; he played police officers in Black and Blue, Framed, Between the Lines and Out of the Blue, and soldier Andy McNab in The One That Got Away (1996). In 1994, he played customs officer Gerry Birch in the first series of The Knock, and Stephen Finney in the six-part ITV series Finney. In Finney, Morrissey assumed the role originated by Sting in Stormy Monday (Mike Figgis, 1988). He was the first choice for the part and had to learn to play the double bass.
Morrissey made his first appearance in a Tony Marchant drama playing Michael Ride in Into the Fire (1996), and the following year played the lead role of Shaun Southerns in Marchant's BBC series Holding On (1997). In 1998, he appeared in Our Mutual Friend alongside Paul McGann. As he was a fan of the book, Morrissey asked director Julian Farino if he could play Eugene Wrayburn, but the role went to McGann. Farino had Morrissey in mind to play schoolmaster Bradley Headstone, a part Morrissey was reluctant to take until he read the script. He studied the role and decided to take it on the basis that the character was unloved and that his motivation by social class causes his mental health problems. His performance was described by a writer for The Guardian as bringing "unprecedented depth to a character [...] who is more commonly portrayed as just another horrible Dickens git." In the same year, he played Christopher "Kiffer" Finzi in Anand Tucker's Hilary and Jackie. His roles in Our Mutual Friend and Hilary and Jackie were described as his breakthrough roles by Zoe Williams of The Guardian. Writing in Time Out, Jane Edwardes suggested that his role as Kiffer in Hilary and Jackie had inspired his casting as Pip in Three Days of Rain as the characters have similarities with each other. Morrissey was attracted to the role because the play began with a long speech and the cast and crew had only two weeks' rehearsal time. Next, he starred in Some Voices (2000), playing Pete. Morrissey researched the character of Pete, a chef, by shadowing the head chef at the Terrace Restaurant in Kensington, London and chopping vegetables in the kitchen for two hours a day. For his next film role as Nazi Captain Weber in Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), Morrissey researched the Hitler Youth and read Gitta Sereny's biography of Albert Speer, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. He also played tabloid journalist Dave Dewston in the four-part BBC serial Murder, and prison officer Mike in the part-improvised single drama Out of Control. He researched the latter part by shadowing prison officers in a young offenders' institution for a week. Mandelson told him about how politics can quickly "seduce" MPs who have worked hard to get into Parliament. When speaking to many of Brown's friends to gain insight into his "private persona", Morrissey discovered that Brown was funny, approachable and charming, which were characteristics he did not see in his "public persona". The director Stephen Frears originally wanted to cast a Scottish actor as Brown but was persuaded by other production staff to cast Morrissey.
His acting in State of Play and The Deal won him considerable acclaim; he was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for his role as Collins but lost to his co-star Bill Nighy. His performance in The Deal was acclaimed by Charlie Whelan, Gordon Brown's former spin doctor, and Tim Allan, a deputy press secretary of Tony Blair. A BBC News Online writer praised Morrissey's grasp of Brown's physical tics in a review that criticised the rest of the film. Morrissey's performance won the RTS Programme Award for Best Male Actor the next year, this time beating Nighy. The RTS jury wrote of Morrissey, "The strength of this performance brought to the screen, and to life, all of the characteristics and traits of the man he portrayed in a way that was both credible and convincing." In 2009, Morrissey declined the opportunity to play Brown again in The Special Relationship, Morgan's third Blair film, as he did not want to get into the mindset of playing Brown for just one scene.
thumbnail|left|Morrissey in July 2013
Morrissey was eager to play a comic role after starring in these dramas. He subsequently reunited with Peter Bowker for the BBC One musical serial Blackpool, in which he plays Blackpool arcade owner Ripley Holden. Bowker remembered Morrissey from Out of the Blue and wanted to build on the actor's sense of humour and to cast him against type. A public poll on bbc.co.uk ranked him the second best actor of 2004. Morrissey reprised the role in 2006 in the one-off sequel Viva Blackpool!. He was pleased to revive Ripley after filming dramatic roles since the original serial.
The following years saw Morrissey cast in two high-profile feature films; while filming the Brian Jones biopic Stoned (2005), he got an audition for psychiatrist Dr. Michael Glass, the male lead in Basic Instinct 2 (2006). He was flown out to Los Angeles for a one-hour screen test with Sharon Stone. Their immediate rapport led to the screen test being extended by another hour and Morrissey's casting in the role. The Washington Post criticised the film's focus on Morrissey's character and called the actor "overmatched by Stone" and "a sad sack", and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called him "a charisma-challenged non-entity". The same Washington Post critic later wrote in the Los Angeles Times that because Morrissey was not a film star, the chemistry between him and Stone had been spoiled. Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club wrote that Morrissey had "the charisma of beige wallpaper" and that "the producers could have replaced him halfway through shooting with a handsome mahogany coat rack and nobody would be able to tell the difference". The bad reviews depressed Morrissey, and he briefly considered giving up acting, but instead saw the role as a chance to learn. The Reaping was released in 2007 and performed badly in cinemas. Despite the failures of both films, Morrissey was grateful that they opened him up to more film offers from Hollywood. He relished working on the character's back story as it confounded the expectations of both him and the audience. The series was broadcast in Britain and America in 2007. He also appeared as Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). He compared Norfolk to bassist Lemmy from Motörhead and researched the role by reading history books and literature from the 16th century. In The Daily Telegraph review that criticised the play, Charles Spencer wrote that Morrissey's was the best performance "as the blue-collar older brother who reveals extraordinary depths of grief, damage and forgiveness that finally light up this dark, flawed play." Benedict Nightingale of The Times initially believed that Morrissey's acting was "a bit stiff, almost as if he was waiting for his cues rather than reacting instantaneously to their content" but found him more impressive as the play went on.
In December 2008, he appeared alongside his Blackpool co-star David Tennant in "The Next Doctor", the 2008 Christmas special of Doctor Who, playing Jackson Lake, a man who believes he is the Doctor after his mind is affected by alien technology. Morrissey had been asked to appear in the series before but had to turn down the offers due to other commitments. He approached the character like any other dramatic part, and was influenced in his performance by previous Doctor actors William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker. Secrecy surrounded the exact details of Morrissey's role in the episode; until the day of broadcast his character was referred to only as "the other Doctor". In September 2009, he told entertainment website Digital Spy that he would gladly return to the show if asked.
In March 2009, Morrissey appeared as corrupt police detective Maurice Jobson in Red Riding, the Channel 4 adaptation of David Peace's Red Riding novels. Morrissey already knew the directors of the films, enjoyed reading the script and had either worked with his co-stars on other projects, or wanted to work with them. He liked the flaws in the Jobson character and that he differs from typical vigilante police officers portrayed on television. Morrissey said of Jobson, "I think he sets out to be a good cop, he tries to do his job well but he gets involved in some corruption and realises that being a 'bit' corrupt is like being a 'bit' pregnant. You either are or you're not."
He was described by the British Film Institute as one of the most versatile English actors of his generation.
2010s
Morrissey was active on screen throughout 2010. He starred as Theunis Swanepoel, the interrogator of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, in the BBC single drama Mrs Mandela. His performance was praised by The Guardian and Independent critics. The following months saw him star as British Transport Police officer Mal Craig in the second series of BBC One's Five Days, Roman soldier Bothos in Neil Marshall's feature Centurion, stalking victim Jan Falkowski in U Be Dead, and Colonel John Arbuthnot in the Agatha Christie's Poirot adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express.
Morrissey returned to a weekly television role at the end of 2010 playing police detective Tom Thorne in Thorne, a six-part television series for Sky1 that was adapted from Mark Billingham's novels Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat. After reading Lifeless during his time filming The Water Horse in New Zealand, Morrissey searched the Internet for more information. He found an interview in which Billingham stated his preference for Morrissey to play Thorne should a screen adaptation ever be made. When he returned to the UK, Morrissey arranged a meeting with Billingham and the two began developing the TV series. Morrissey shadowed officers in the Metropolitan Police's murder unit during their duties to learn about their jobs. He discovered that the officers felt undervalued in their jobs, and he incorporated these feelings into the series. and Adam Sweeting for The Arts Desk called him "authentic as the phlegmatic, low-key Thorne."
In 2011, Morrissey starred as Robert Carne in South Riding, and played Dunlop in the Lionsgate crime drama feature Blitz. Morrissey talked about the role to criminologists, to draw parallels with real-life serial killers, and focused on Macbeth's status as a war hero and his childless relationship with Lady Macbeth. Morrissey's performance was commended by Laura Davis in the Liverpool Daily Post, who highlighted his delivery of his lines and portrayal of Macbeth "[shifting] from straight-spined statesman to a fervent slayer". Clare Brenan of The Observer offered similar praise but noted that Morrissey's vocal inflections were sometimes "flat and rushed". Continuing his roles in Shakespeare productions, Morrissey played Northumberland in "Richard II", a BBC Two film adaptation of the play of the same name and the first episode of the series The Hollow Crown, broadcast in July 2012.
Morrissey joined the cast of The Walking Dead for its third season in 2012. He portrayed The Governor, a major villain from the graphic novel upon which the series is based. Morrissey read the prequel novel Rise of the Governor to gain insight into the character and his motivations. He also worked with an accent coach and listened to politicians with Southern accents, including Bill Clinton. He returned for the fourth season in 2013, and made a cameo appearance in 2015. In 2014, Morrissey returned to British television in the David Nicholls drama The 7.39 and the three-part serial The Driver, written by Danny Brocklehurst.
Morrissey was made an Honorary Doctor of Arts (HonDA) by Edge Hill University in 2016. From 10 September to 10 October that year, he starred in Hangmen by Martin McDonagh, at the Royal Court Theatre. The play followed Harry Wade, a former hangman, after the abolition of hanging in Great Britain in 1965. The following year he joined the cast of The League of Gentlemen for their 2017 revival.
From January 2018, Morrissey appeared as Mark Antony in Julius Caesar at the new Bridge Theatre. In April that year, he also starred as Inspector Tyador Borlú in the BBC2 drama The City and the City, adapted from China Miéville's novel of the same name by screenwriter Tony Grisoni.
2020s
In 2022, he played the main antagonist Gorka in the Italian horror-fantasy film Dampyr. He also starred in the 2024 sci-fi film Slingshot.