Stuart Townsend Photo Gallery
Stuart Townsend (born on December 15, 1972 in Howth, County Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish actor.

Like fellow Irish actor Colin Farrell, he attended the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin where he made his non-professional stage debut in the school's production of Tear Up The Black Sail. His professional stage debut was in 1994's True Lines, directed by John Crowley, who later directed Intermission. True Lines was first performed in Kilkenny; it later moved to the Dublin Theatre Festival and on to Bush Theatre in London.

Townsend's early movie roles were in Irish short films such as "Godsuit" and "Summertime". His first part in a feature length film was Trojan Eddie, a 1996 UK/Irish co-production. In 1997 he landed a lead role in the British film Shooting Fish, which really propelled his career.

After his appearance as the outrageous seducer in the title role of About Adam, he started to be noticed in the United States by critics and the public alike. In the summer of 2000, he briefly returned to the London stage in the Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending, starring as Val Xavier, alongside Helen Mirren as Lady Torrance.

In recent years he has appeared in a number of big budget films including Queen of the Damned, opposite Aaliyah, as the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt; and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as Dorian Gray.

In 2005 Townsend starred alongside Gabrielle Union in Night Stalker, the 2005 remake of the 1974 ABC TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. He played the part of Carl Kolchak, an investigative reporter looking into his wife's murder. Night Stalker was abruptly cancelled by ABC after six episodes due to bad viewing figures.

Trivia

He was removed from the Peter Jackson production of the Lord of the Rings after just four days of filming. He maintains that he was miscast and was too young for the role of Aragorn. He was replaced by Viggo Mortensen. Interestingly, within the Richard III Society, Stuart Townsend became the most commonly considered actor to possibly portray the King in a sympathetic biopic after Mortensen was written off as too old. Townsend does bear a startling resemblance to the arch-top portrait of Richard III.
His father, Peter Townsend, was a professional golfer.
There is quite a large age gap between Stuart and his siblings. His brother, Dylan, is 13 years younger than him and his sister, Chloe, is 15 years younger, his youngest brother Lucas is 11 years younger.
He has a half-brother named Hugo and half-sister named Ella; his father remarried in 1997 after Stuart's mother died in 1994.
He appeared in an episode of Will & Grace where he played a pansexual employee of Karen Walker's.
Stuart Townsend is also the name of a character in Anne Rice's "The Witching hour"

Selected filmography

Chaos Theory (2007) (pre-production)
The Best Man (2005) ... as Ollie Pickering
Head in the Clouds (2004) ... as Guy
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) ... as Dorian Gray
Shade (2003) ... as Vernon
Trapped (2002) ... as William Jennings
Queen of the Damned (2002) ... as Lestat de Lioncourt
About Adam (2000) ... as Adam
Mauvaise passe (1999) ... as Tom
The Venice Project (1999) ... as Lark/Gippo the Fool
Wonderland (1999) ... as Tim
Simon Magus (1999) ... as Dovid Bendel
Resurrection Man (1998) ... as Victor Kelly
Under the Skin (1997) ... as Tom
Shooting Fish (1997) ... as Jez
Trojan Eddie (1996) ... Dermot