Ciarán Fitzgerald was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 27 July, 1983. He is best known as a child actor. He made his film debut as a nine year old in the Irish film
Into the West (1992), directed by Mike Newell, in which he played one of the two lead characters. In this, his first film, his co-stars included such greats of Irish acting as
Gabriel Byrne,
David Kelly,
Colm Meaney and
Brendan Gleeson. Together with co-star
Rúaidhrí Conroy, he won the Young Actor Award of 1994 as Outstanding Youth Actor in a Family Foreign Film for this performance. During the 1990s, Ciarán Fitzgerald appeared in numerous, mostly Irish, films and TV productions including
The General (1998) and
The Boxer (1997).