This is a list of notable Irish American actors.
To be included in this list, the person must have a Wikipedia article and references showing the person is Irish American and a notable actor.
The list is organized in reverse chronological order of birth decades and all of the actors' surnames are in alphabetical order.
Joshua Carter Jackson is a Canadian-American actor. He is known for his portrayal of Pacey Witter on The WB's teen drama Dawson's Creek (1998–2003), Peter Bishop in the Fox science fiction series Fringe (2008–2013), Cole Lockhart on Showtime's The Affair (2014–2018), Dan Gallagher in the Paramount+ series Fatal Attraction, and Dr. Christopher Duntsch in the Peacock crime drama series Dr. Death (2021). For the latter, he was nominated for the 2022 Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Limited Series. His other credits include When They See Us (2019), and Little Fires Everywhere (2020).
Grace Patricia Kelly, also known as Grace of Monaco, was an American actress and Princess of Monaco as the wife of Prince Rainier III from their marriage on April 18, 1956, until her death in 1982. Prior to her marriage, she starred in several significant films in the early to mid-1950s. She received an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards and was ranked 13th on the American Film Institute's 25 Greatest Female Stars list.
Ramón Gerard Antonio Estévez, known professionally as Martin Sheen, is an American actor. In a career spanning six decades he received numerous accolades including three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Pierce Brendan Brosnan OBE is an Irish actor and film producer. He was the fifth actor to play the fictional secret agent James Bond in the James Bond film series, starring in four films from 1995 to 2002 and in multiple video games.
Gabriel James Byrne is an Irish actor. He has received a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for a Grammy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Tony Awards. Byrne was awarded the Irish Film and Television Academy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018 and was listed at number 17 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors in 2020. The Guardian named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.
Michael John Douglas, known professionally as Michael Keaton, is an American actor. He is known for his leading roles in a wide variety of genre films. He has received numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award. In 2016, he was named Officer of Order of Arts and Letters in France.
Dermot John Morgan was an Irish comedian and actor, best known for his role as Father Ted Crilly on the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted.
Josephine Edna O'Brien is an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short-story writer. Elected to Aosdána by her fellow artists, she was honoured with the title Saoi in 2015 and the biennial "UK and Ireland Nobel" David Cohen Prize in 2019, whilst France made her Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2021.
Jeffrey Garlin is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is best known for playing Murray Goldberg, patriarch of the eponymous family in the ABC sitcom The Goldbergs, and Jeff Greene on the HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. He also played Marvin on Mad About You and Mort Meyers on Arrested Development for Fox and Netflix.
Kelly LeBrock(born March 24, 1960) is American-English actress and model. Her acting debut was in The Woman in Red (1984), alongside Gene Wilder. She also starred in the John Hughes film Weird Science (1985), and in Hard to Kill (1990), opposite her now ex-husband Steven Seagal.
William Joseph Patrick O'Brien was an American film actor with more than 100 screen credits. Of Irish descent, he often played Irish and Irish-American characters and was referred to as "Hollywood's Irishman in Residence" in the press. One of the best-known screen actors of the 1930s and 1940s, he played priests, cops, military figures, pilots, and reporters. He is especially well-remembered for his roles in Knute Rockne, All American (1940), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), and Some Like It Hot (1959). He was frequently paired onscreen with Hollywood star James Cagney. O'Brien also appeared on stage and television.
Irish Mexicans are inhabitants of Mexico that are immigrants from or descendants of immigrants from Ireland. The majority of Irish immigrants to Mexico were Catholic.
Christopher O'Dowd is an Irish actor and comedian. He received wide attention as Roy Trenneman, one of the lead characters in the Channel 4 comedy The IT Crowd, which ran for four series between 2006 and 2010. He has also starred in several films, including Gulliver's Travels (2010), Bridesmaids, Friends with Kids, Cuban Fury (2014), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018). He created and starred in the Sky 1 television series Moone Boy, which aired between 2012 and 2015 and brought him Irish Film and Television Award nominations in acting, writing and directing.
Conan Christopher O'Brien is an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. He is best known for having hosted late-night talk shows, beginning with Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993–2009) and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (2009–2010) on the NBC television network, and Conan (2010–2021) on the cable channel TBS. Before his hosting career, O'Brien was a writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1988 to 1991, and the Fox animated sitcom The Simpsons from 1991 to 1993. He has also been host of the podcast series Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend since 2018 and starred in the 2024 travel show Conan O'Brien Must Go on Max.
Elizabeth Claire Kemper is an American actress, best known for her roles of Erin Hannon in the sitcom The Office (2009–2013) and Kimmy Schmidt in the sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2019). She has also appeared in films, notably Bridesmaids (2011), 21 Jump Street (2012), Sex Tape (2014), and Home Sweet Home Alone (2021). In 2018, she released her debut book, My Squirrel Days.
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: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)Ronan has dual US/Irish citizenship
Her mother (half English, half Italian) makes ceramic pots, her dad (Irish) sells them – and Stiles admits that the basic ethos is, 'it's bad to be lazy! If I decided not to go to college [my parents] would not be that happy.'
My mother's parents were from Ireland, so
And so many of us -- Neil Flynn grew up in the suburbs of Chicago -- and just talking about how he grew up ... And he's also Irish-Catholic, which is how I grew up.
I am Irish, after all.
He was born Ramon Estevez in 1940, in Ohio, the seventh of 10 children of a Spanish immigrant father and an Irish mother.
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) "We're also both Irish. "Eccentric," she says. "When I was in Ireland recently, I went there to do a play, I picked up a book called Irish Eccentrics. I wouldn't be anything else. It's the saddest damn history I've ever seen, and now I can't get enough of Irish history. And, I married an Englishman."{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) "Many of the biographies on Keaton say that he was, indeed, Irish. But Keaton's sister Louise apparently believed that there back in the family history the Keatons had some Native American blood as well."