Paul Mescal
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Paul Mescal (born February 2, 1996, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland) is an Irish actor whose career was launched by his lead performance in the acclaimed television miniseries Normal People (2020). Mescal then starred in a series of critically praised films, including Aftersun (2022), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination for best actor.
Early life
Mescal is the eldest of three children born to Dearbhla Mescal, a police officer, and Paul Mescal, a schoolteacher and semiprofessional actor. The younger Mescal first began acting while in high school, and he played the title role in a production of Phantom of the Opera. He later studied acting at Trinity College Dublin’s prestigious Lir Academy. During this time Mescal was also a standout Gaelic football player, but he gave up the sport after suffering a broken jaw during a match.
Stardom: Normal People and Aftersun
Mescal graduated from the Lir Academy in 2017, and that year he appeared in several theatrical productions in Dublin, including The Great Gatsby and The Red Shoes. The following year he had a supporting role in The Plough and the Stars at London’s Lyric Hammersmith Theatre.
In 2019 Mescal made his TV debut, appearing in the comedy series Bump. That year he landed his breakthrough role in Normal People, a coming-of-age drama based on the novel by Sally Rooney. The sexually explicit show focuses on the on-again, off-again romance of two Irish teens, Connell and Marianne (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones), while also exploring their experiences with mental illness. Normal People was released in 2020, and it became the most streamed series on the BBC that year. It was also a huge success on Hulu. Critics praised the lead actors’ performances, especially noting their chemistry. The Atlantic’s staff writer Sophie Gilbert wrote that “Edgar-Jones and Mescal generate so much intensity that any scene without the two of them almost feels like an affront.” For his work, Mescal won the BAFTA Award for best actor.
Mescal’s meteoric rise continued with several well-received films. First came a supporting role in the award-winning The Lost Daughter (2021), an adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel. He then played a young man accused of rape in God’s Creatures (2022). The film premiered at the 2022 Cannes film festival—as did Aftersun, in which Mescal played a father who takes his 11-year-old daughter (Frankie Corio) on a holiday trip to Turkey. The New York Times critic A.O. Scott praised the performances of Mescal and Corio, writing that “they are so natural, so light and grave and particular, that they don’t seem to be acting at all.” Mescal later received an Oscar nomination for best actor.
Mescal next appeared as a troubled war veteran in Benjamin Millepied’s Carmen (2022), a modern cinematic take on Georges Bizet’s enduring opera, set on the U.S.-Mexico border. In All of Us Strangers (2023), Mescal and Andrew Scott portrayed characters who embark on a romantic relationship while dealing with past trauma. The film garnered glowing reviews. Mescal’s other credits from 2023 include Foe, a sci-fi drama set in 2065 after a catastrophic world event. That year Mescal was also cast in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2, a sequel to the 2000 box-office hit that starred Russell Crowe. The movie was released in 2024.
Theater work
Mescal also continued to perform on the stage. In 2020 he appeared in a Dublin production of Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Three years later he returned to the London stage, starring in a revival of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. He portrayed Stanley Kowalski, a character made famous by Marlon Brando. The New York Times theater critic Matt Wolf wrote that Mescal “brings both swagger and sensitivity to the role, in the process stepping out of the long shadow cast [by] Marlon Brando.” The production received critical acclaim, and it soon transferred to the West End. Later in 2023 Mescal won his first Olivier Award, for best actor.
