Paul Mescal: The Rise of Ireland's Breakout Star

Paul Mescal became famous during a lockdown, in a television series about two young people in Ireland who cannot say what they feel, and the timing was perfect, because the whole world was locked inside, feeling exactly the same way. Born in Maynooth, Ireland, in 1996, he grew up playing Gaelic football, dreaming of a sporting career, and only turned to acting in his late teens, training at Trinity College Dublin and working on the Irish stage. Then came Normal People, and Connell Waldron, and suddenly he was one of the most talked-about actors in the world, with an Emmy nomination and a career that moved, in a few short years, from a small Irish drama to Aftersun, an Oscar nomination, and Gladiator II. His life story is about how quickly everything can change, and about staying grounded when it does.

Maynooth, Football and a Sporting Dream

Paul Mescal grew up in Maynooth, a university town in County Kildare, Ireland, and for most of his childhood he thought his future was in sport, not in acting. He played Gaelic football seriously, dreamed of playing for Kildare, and was the kind of teenager whose life revolved around training, matches and the team, and that sporting background still shapes the way he works, with discipline, teamwork and a hatred of losing.

Mescal was born in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland, in 1996, and grew up in a family where sport and school were central, with his father a teacher and his mother a police officer, a background that kept him grounded. He played Gaelic football at a high level as a teenager, representing his county at underage level, and he has spoken about how much the sport taught him, about discipline, about being part of a team, and about handling pressure. An injury, and the realisation that a professional sporting career was unlikely, pushed him to think about other paths, and it was during his late teens that he began to take acting seriously, a decision that surprised people who had only ever known him as a footballer. That sporting past is still visible in the way he talks about work, because he describes acting in the language of training and preparation, and he brings an athlete’s focus to a rehearsal room, a quality directors have praised again and again.

Trinity, the Stage and Learning the Craft

Unlike many young stars, Paul Mescal trained properly, at one of Ireland’s most respected drama schools, and then worked on the stage, in classical plays and new Irish writing, before anyone had heard of him on screen. That training matters, because it gave him a technique, a voice, and a respect for the craft that is visible in every performance he gives, even the smallest ones.

He studied acting at the Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 2017, one of the most respected drama programmes in Ireland, where he trained in voice, movement and classical theatre. After graduating he worked on the Irish stage, appearing in productions at the Abbey Theatre and the Gate Theatre in Dublin, including plays by Shakespeare and by contemporary Irish writers, work that paid little but taught him enormously. He played the title role in a production of The Great Gatsby and appeared in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and other classical plays, building a reputation in Dublin theatre as a serious, committed young actor. Stage work taught him the discipline of a long run, of playing the same role night after night and finding something new in it each time, and that discipline is one reason his screen performances feel so considered and so complete.

Normal People and Overnight Fame

Normal People changed Paul Mescal’s life in a matter of weeks, and the role of Connell Waldron became one of the defining performances of the pandemic era, because millions of people, locked in their homes, watched two young Irish people struggle to say what they felt, and recognised themselves. The series, based on Sally Rooney’s novel, was a phenomenon, and Mescal, who had never carried a television series before, carried it with a quietness that made audiences lean in.

In 2020 he starred as Connell Waldron in Normal People, the BBC and Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s bestselling novel, playing a popular schoolboy in Sligo who begins a secret relationship with Marianne, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones. The series was released during the first pandemic lockdown, when audiences around the world were stuck at home, and it became a huge hit, with viewers binge-watching the twelve episodes and discussing them online as if they were real people. Mescal’s performance, which showed Connell’s shyness, his kindness and his inability to express his feelings, earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, an extraordinary achievement for a first major screen role. The fame that followed was sudden and overwhelming, and Mescal has spoken about how strange it felt to become famous while locked down, unable to go out, and how the role changed his life before he had a chance to get used to it.

Aftersun and the Oscar Nomination

If Normal People made Paul Mescal famous, Aftersun made him respected, because the film, a quiet, devastating story about a father and daughter on holiday, gave him a role that required him to play a man who is falling apart while pretending to be fine, and he played it with a restraint that broke audiences’ hearts. The performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and it confirmed that Normal People had not been a fluke.

In 2022 he starred in Aftersun, directed by Charlotte Wells, playing Calum, a young Scottish father on holiday in Turkey with his eleven-year-old daughter, Sophie, a man who is loving, funny and, underneath it all, deeply depressed. The film is told largely from Sophie’s perspective, as an adult remembering the holiday, and Mescal had to play a character whose pain is visible only in glimpses, in a look, a pause, a moment when the smile slips. His performance was widely described as one of the best of the year, and it earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, as well as a BAFTA nomination, making him one of the youngest actors to receive such recognition. Aftersun also showed his range, because Calum is nothing like Connell, he is older, sadder, more damaged, and Mescal played him without a trace of the character that had made him famous, which is the mark of a real actor.

Theatre Returns and the Stage Habit

What makes Paul Mescal different from many screen stars is that he keeps going back to the stage, even when film offers are pouring in, and he does it because the theatre is where he learned his craft and where he feels most alive as an actor. His return to the stage in A Streetcar Named Desire, playing Stanley Kowalski, was one of the most talked-about theatre events in London in years, and it proved that his stage talent was as strong as his screen talent.

After Normal People and Aftersun, Mescal returned to the stage, playing Stanley Kowalski in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire in London, a role that is one of the most famous and most demanding in American theatre. The production was a huge success, transferring to the West End and earning Mescal an Olivier Award nomination, and critics praised the rawness and the physicality of his Stanley, a performance that was both terrifying and tender. He has spoken about the importance of theatre to him, about the feeling of being in a room with an audience, and about how stage work keeps him honest as an actor, because there is nowhere to hide on a stage. This habit of returning to the theatre, even at the height of his film fame, marks him as an actor who cares about the craft more than the career, and it has earned him enormous respect from directors, writers and fellow actors.

Gladiator II and the Blockbuster Test

The biggest test of Paul Mescal’s career so far was Gladiator II, the sequel to one of the most successful films ever made, in which he played Lucius, the son of Maximus, and had to carry a huge, expensive epic on his shoulders. It was a different kind of acting from Normal People or Aftersun, physical, loud, and made for the biggest screens in the world, and it proved that he could be a movie star as well as an actor’s actor.

In 2024 he starred as Lucius in Gladiator II, directed by Ridley Scott, playing the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus, a man who has grown up in exile and who is drawn back to Rome to fight in the arena. The film was one of the biggest releases of the year, with a huge budget, enormous sets and battle scenes, and Mescal had to train physically for the role, building the strength and the stamina that a gladiator requires. Critics noted that he brought a quiet intensity to the role, a contrast to the bombast around him, and that his performance grounded the film in a way that made the spectacle feel human. Gladiator II confirmed his status as a leading man who can open a blockbuster, and it opened the door to the biggest roles in Hollywood, while also raising the question of what he will choose to do with that power.

Fame, Privacy and Staying Irish

Paul Mescal has become famous very quickly, and he has handled it in a way that feels distinctly Irish, with humour, self-deprecation and a determination to stay close to home. He lives in London, goes back to Ireland often, talks about his family and his friends, and gives interviews that are warm and funny rather than guarded, and that openness has made him one of the most liked actors of his generation.

He has spoken about the strangeness of fame, about being recognised on the street, about the loss of privacy, and about the importance of keeping his life normal, with the same friends, the same family and the same sense of humour he had before Normal People. He is known for his warmth in interviews, for his love of music, and for his habit of talking about his work with honesty rather than with the polished language of publicity, which has made him a favourite with journalists and audiences alike. He has also been open about his mental health and about the pressure of sudden fame, and that honesty has made him a figure many young people look to, not just as an actor but as someone navigating the same pressures they feel. Staying connected to Ireland matters to him, and he has spoken about the importance of Irish stories, Irish writers and Irish theatre, and about wanting to be part of that tradition rather than simply leaving it behind.

What Comes Next for Ireland’s Breakout Star

Paul Mescal is still in his late twenties, and the most interesting part of his story is the part that has not happened yet, because he has already done what most actors spend a lifetime trying to do, and he has done it in five years. The question now is not whether he will keep working, it is what kind of actor he will become, and whether he can keep the balance between the blockbusters and the small, strange films that made him.

His upcoming work includes a mix of big films and smaller, independent projects, a pattern that suggests he is choosing variety over safety and is willing to risk a flop for the sake of an interesting role. He has also been linked to major literary adaptations and to returns to the stage, and each choice will tell us something about the actor he wants to be, whether it is a movie star, a theatre actor, or, as seems most likely, both. What is clear is that he has the talent, the training and the temperament to last, because he is disciplined, curious and grounded, three qualities that are rarer in Hollywood than they should be. Whatever he does next, he has already changed the way the world sees Irish actors, and he has done it by being himself, a boy from Maynooth who played football, went to drama school, and then, almost by accident, became a star.

Music, Friendship and the Life Off Screen

Paul Mescal is known for his love of music, for his friendships, and for a life off screen that is warm, funny and completely ordinary, and that ordinariness is part of his appeal, because he is a star who still goes to gigs, who still talks about his friends, and who still sounds like a boy from Maynooth, even when he is on a red carpet in Los Angeles. He has spoken about the importance of music, about the songs that shaped him, and about the friends who keep him grounded, and that groundedness is the reason he has handled sudden fame with a grace that many young stars do not manage.

He is a keen music lover, and he has spoken about the bands and the songs that matter to him, and about the way music helps him prepare for a role, by giving him a mood, a rhythm, and a feeling to carry into a performance. He has maintained close friendships from before his fame, particularly with friends from Maynooth and from drama school, and he has described those friendships as essential, because they remind him of who he was before Normal People. He is also known for his humour, for his self-deprecation, and for a willingness to laugh at himself, qualities that have made him a favourite in interviews, and that have endeared him to audiences who are tired of stars who take themselves too seriously.

My Take:

My honest view is that Paul Mescal is the most naturally gifted young actor working today, and I say naturally because his performances do not feel like performances, they feel like a person thinking and feeling in front of you. Watch him as Connell in Normal People, the way he listens, the way he pauses before he speaks, the way his face changes when Marianne says something that hurts him, and you see an actor who is not showing you an emotion, he is having it. That is a rare gift, and it cannot be taught, it can only be protected, and Mescal has protected it by choosing roles that ask for honesty rather than showmanship.

What I love about his story is the ordinariness of it, because he was a boy from Maynooth who played Gaelic football, went to drama school, worked on the stage, and then became famous, and none of that is glamorous, it is just work. There is no child-star backstory, no famous family, no lucky break that explains it, there is only training, talent and a role that happened to be perfect for him at the perfect moment. That ordinariness is reassuring, because it suggests that a career like his is possible for anyone with the talent and the discipline, not just for people born into the industry.

Aftersun asks its actor to play the hiding, not the sadness, and that is a much harder job. Calum is a father falling apart who spends the whole film pretending he is fine, smiling, dancing, being good company for his daughter, and Mescal lets the audience see the pretence rather than the collapse. Then comes a single look, a moment when Sophie is not watching, and the truth slips out for a second, and that second is devastating in a way that a full scene of crying never could be. Most performers would have played the grief directly and asked for sympathy; Mescal played the effort of concealing it, and the concealment is what makes the film unbearable, because everyone watching has done the same thing, smiled while falling apart, and recognised themselves in the act.

Five years, from drama school to an Emmy nomination to an Oscar nomination to Gladiator II, is a pace that can break a person, and I watch Mescal’s speed with admiration and a little worry. He seems grounded, talking about family and friends and music, going back to the stage between films, and those are good signs, because the stage is where he learned the work and where the work is still judged by the room, not by the opening weekend. But Hollywood has a habit of using up its young discoveries and moving on to the next one, and the pressure of being the next big thing is real even for someone who handles it well. I hope he keeps refusing, keeps choosing the small films, and keeps protecting the gift, because the gift is the kind that needs shelter, not exposure, to keep growing.

Training is the unfashionable part of this story, and it is the part that explains the rest. Mescal did not appear from nowhere; he went to the Lir Academy, worked at the Abbey and the Gate, played Shakespeare and new Irish writing, and that schooling is visible in every performance, in the voice, in the body, in the discipline of a man who knows how to build a character from the feet up. The industry loves the myth of the natural, the talent discovered fully formed, because the myth is better copy, but the myth is a lie, and the truth is more useful: talent is raw material, and training is the craft that turns it into something that can hold an audience for two hours. Young actors who want a career like his should enrol, not just audition.

Three registers, and almost nobody his age can play all three: the intimate drama, the art film, and the blockbuster. Mescal has already shown he can do each, which leaves him with the rarest problem in acting, a genuinely open choice about what to become. I hope he picks the strange and the difficult, the films that ask something of him, rather than the safe and the lucrative, because the strange choices are the ones that build a career like Daniel Day-Lewis’s or Cillian Murphy’s, a career built on decisions rather than on fame. The safe choices would still make him a star, but a smaller one, a poster rather than a performer. He has given every sign of knowing who he is and what he wants, and that self-knowledge is the best predictor I know of the choices to come.

Normal is the word people keep using about Mescal, and I think it is the highest praise available to him. He goes home to Maynooth, talks to his friends, loves music, laughs at himself, and refuses to perform a larger-than-life version of who he is, and that refusal is exactly what makes audiences trust him. A persona is a costume, and costumes crack under pressure; a person is sturdier, because there is nothing to maintain. He is a normal person who became famous without becoming a performance of fame, and the normality is not an accident of character, it is a discipline, the daily work of staying in touch with the life that made him, and that discipline is visible in every interview, where he sounds like someone you might actually know.

What keeps Mescal steady is not luck, it is a set of roots he refuses to pull up. Maynooth, his family, his friends, the stage, the music: these are the fixed points he returns to between films, and they do the quiet work of reminding him who he was before the nominations. Fame is a wind, and a person without roots gets blown wherever it points; a person with roots bends and stays standing. Through an Emmy nomination, an Oscar nomination, and a blockbuster, those roots have held, and I expect them to keep holding, because he tends them deliberately, going home, going back to theatre, keeping the same people close. The career will change shape many times; the roots are the part I would bet on staying put.

Aftersun should have disappeared. It is quiet, sad, and almost plotless, the kind of film that festivals love and audiences miss, and instead it became one of the most talked-about films of its year, because a performance made it impossible to forget. Mescal plays a father coming apart so quietly that you almost miss it, and then, on a dance floor in a hotel lobby, the truth arrives in a single scene and breaks your heart. That is the point of the film and, I think, the point of his career so far: the moments that look smallest are the ones that hit hardest, if you know how to play them. He knew, and a film that should have vanished is still being argued about, quoted, and rewatched, which is a better fate than most blockbusters get.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Paul Mescal from?

Paul Mescal was born in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland, in 1996, and grew up there in a family where his father was a teacher and his mother a police officer. He played Gaelic football seriously as a teenager before turning to acting and training at the Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin.

How did Paul Mescal become famous?

Mescal became famous playing Connell Waldron in Normal People, the BBC and Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel, which was released in 2020 during the first pandemic lockdown. The series became a huge hit, and his performance earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.

Was Paul Mescal nominated for an Oscar for Aftersun?

Yes, Mescal received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for playing Calum in Aftersun in 2022. The film, about a father and daughter on holiday in Turkey, was widely praised, and his restrained performance was described as one of the best of the year.

What is Paul Mescal’s role in Gladiator II?

In Gladiator II, released in 2024 and directed by Ridley Scott, Mescal plays Lucius, the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus from the original film. The role was his biggest blockbuster test, requiring physical training and carrying a huge, expensive epic.

Did Paul Mescal train as an actor?

Yes, Mescal studied acting at the Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 2017, and then worked on the Irish stage at the Abbey Theatre and the Gate Theatre in Dublin before his screen breakthrough in Normal People.