Biography for
Eddie Marsan More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

1968, Stepney, London, England, UK

Birth Name

Edward Maurice C. Marsan

Height

5' 8½" (1.74 m)

Mini Biography

Eddie Marsan was born in Bethnal Green, East London and served an apprenticeship as a printer before becoming an actor twenty years ago. During this time he has worked with directors such as Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg, Terence Malik, Woody Allen, Alejandro Gonzalez Innarittu, JJ Abrams, Peter Berg, Guy Ritchie and Richard Linklater.

He has collaborated with Mike Leigh on three films. Vera Drake, for which he won the British Independent Film Award for best supporting actor, Happy Go Lucky, for which he also won a BIFA for best supporting actor as well as the London Film Critics Circle Award and the National Society Of Film Critics, and he has just completed Mike Leigh's latest film, A Running Jump. Most recently he was nominated for an Evening Standard Film Award for best actor for The Disappearance of Alice Creed.

He is a patron for the School Of the Science of Acting and Kazzum, a children's theatre company that promotes the acceptance of Diversity.

He is married to the Make-up artist Janine Schneider-Marsan and they have four children.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Robert Knight

Trivia

Attended Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, and the Academy of the Science of Acting & Directing.

Personal Quotes

I sometimes think if I had gone to Oxford or Cambridge and looked like a handsome young guy who could be in an Evelyn Waugh novel or something, I'd be a massive movie star. But there's a longevity to what I do. It's more reliable. Someone isn't deciding that I'm the next big thing. Because if they're deciding I'm the next big thing, they can decide that someone else is the next big thing.

I used to do a lot of comedy. I don't know what happened. I think it's my face.

I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination. The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character. I was lucky because when I started acting, it was doing jobs above pubs. I learned to act in anonymity so by the time people saw me, I knew what I was doing. I was crap for years but no one saw me being crap. It's a trade you learn.