David Mark Joseph Morrissey (born 21 June 1964) is an English actor and filmmaker. He had numerous small roles in films and television series throughout the 1990s before achieving wider recognition for playing Gordon Brown in The Deal (2003), Stephen Collins in State of Play (2003), The Governor in the third and fourth seasons of The Walking Dead (2012–2015), and DCS Ian St Clair in Sherwood (2022–present). He has also acted extensively on stage with companies such as the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre.
Morrissey has directed short films and the television dramas Sweet Revenge (2001) and Passer By (2004). His feature-length directorial debut, the television film Don't Worry About Me (2010), premiered on BBC Two. He was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for State of Play and won a Best Actor award from the Royal Television Society for The Deal. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Edge Hill University in 2016.
Early life David Mark Joseph Morrissey was born in the Kensington area of Liverpool on 21 June 1964, the son of Littlewoods employee Joan and cobbler Joe Morrissey.Leith, Sam (2 November 2004). "Deep undercover ". The Daily Telegraph (Telegraph Media Group). Retrieved 6 November 2008.Philby, Charlotte (7 June 2008). "My Secret Life: David Morrissey, Actor, age 43". The Independent (Independent News & Media): p. 9 (Independent Magazine supplement). He has two older brothers named Tony and Paul, and an older sister named Karen.Rudd, Alyson (5 March 2007). "It's Beverly Hills Kop". The Times (Times Newspapers): p. 18 (The Game section). Retrieved 17 December 2007.Jones, Catherine (23 February 2008). "TV actor Morrissey guest of honour ". Liverpool Echo (Trinity Mirror North West): p. 5. Retrieved 17 December 2008. The family lived at 45 Seldon Street in Kensington. Decades later, as part of National Museums Liverpool's Eight Hundred Lives project, Morrissey wrote that the house had been in his family since at least 1900; his grandmother had been married there and his mother was born there. In 1971, the family moved to a larger and more modern house on the new estates at Knotty Ash, while Seldon Street was later demolished.David Morrissey profile. Eight Hundred Lives (National Museums Liverpool). 15 May 2006. Retrieved 6 November 2008 (archived by WebCite on 5 June 2011).
Morrissey was greatly interested in film, television, and Gene Kelly musicals as a child.Cavendish, Simon (5 September 1998). "Arts: I wanted to be Gene Kelly ". The Independent (Newspaper Publishing): p. 12 (features section). Retrieved 5 June 2011. He decided to become an actor after seeing a broadcast of Kes on television.Husband, Stuart (24 February 2008). "The incredible disappearing man ". The Sunday Telegraph (Telegraph Media Group): p. 32. Retrieved 4 November 2008. At St Margaret Mary's Primary School, he was encouraged by a teacher named Miss Keller, who cast him as the Scarecrow in a school production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz when he was 11 years old. Keller left the school soon after, leaving him without encouragement.Owens, Paula (11 October 2007). "Liverpool's such a haven for filmmakers, says star ". Liverpool Daily Post (Trinity Mirror North West): p. 10. Retrieved 4 November 2008."NFT Interviews: David Morrissey". British Film Institute. 2 March 2004. Retrieved 30 October 2008 (archived by WebCite on 5 June 2011). His secondary school, De La Salle School, had no drama classes and made him think that the fear of bullying often dissuaded pupils from participating in lessons.Riley, Joe (4 May 2001). "Morrissey's starring role ". Liverpool Echo (Trinity Mirror North West): p. 12. Retrieved 6 November 2008. On the advice of a cousin, he joined the Everyman Youth Theatre. For the first couple of weeks, he was quite shy and did not join in with the workshops. When he eventually participated, he ended up appearing in their production of Fighting Chance, a play about the 1981 riots in Liverpool.
By the age of 14, Morrissey was one of two youth theatre members who sat on the board of the Everyman Theatre.Franks, Alan (7 April 2007)."The everyman". The Times (Times Newspapers): pp. 44–45 (Magazine supplement). Retrieved 17 December 2008. His contemporaries included Cathy Tyson, brothers Mark and Stephen McGann, and Ian Hart, the last being his friend since they were both five years old. He became friends with the McGann brothers and they introduced him to their brother Paul, who was on a break from his studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). When he was 15 years old, his father died from a terminal blood disorder at the age of 54, after a long period of illness. After leaving school at the age of 16, Morrissey moved to Wolverhampton to join a theatre company there, where he worked on sets and costumes.Lacey, Hester (15 March 2013). "The Inventory: David Morrissey". Financial Times. Retrieved 21 March 2013 (archived by WebCite on 21 March 2013).
Career Acting 1980s In 1982, Morrissey auditioned for One Summer, a television series by Willy Russell for Yorkshire Television and Channel 4 about two Liverpool boys who run away to Wales one summer. Russell had been attached to the Everyman for many years, and Morrissey had seen him while he was working behind the bar downstairs from the theatre, though the two had never been introduced. Morrissey went to at least eight auditions, and in one read for the part of Icky opposite Paul McGann, who was reading for Billy. McGann, five years older than Morrissey, believed that he was too old to be playing the part of 16-year-old Billy and stepped back from the production, leaving the role to go to Morrissey. Spencer Leigh got the part of Icky and Ian Hart played the supporting role of Rabbit. Russell had a professional disagreement with the director Gordon Flemyng and producer Keith Richardson over the casting of 18-year-old Morrissey and Leigh; he believed that the sympathy of 16-year-olds running away was lost by casting older actors. Russell subsequently had his name removed from the credits of the original broadcast.Grant, Steve (4–10 August 1983). "Television: Russell falls out with YTV". Time Out London (Time Out):. After filming One Summer for five months, Morrissey went travelling in Kenya with his cousins. When he returned to Britain, One Summer was being broadcast, and he dealt with the new experience of being recognised in public.
Morrissey had planned to study at RADA in London, but his colleagues at the Everyman encouraged him not to as he already had his Equity card. His One Summer co-star James Hazeldine convinced him otherwise, and he went to London for a year. He became homesick while there and did not enjoy the way RADA was turning him into a "bland actor". On a visit back to Liverpool he told Paul McGann's mother that he was considering leaving the college. Back in London, McGann met with him and reassured him that he had been through the same homesickness phase when he first went to RADA. Morrissey continued his studies at RADA and graduated on 1 December 1985.Rozner, Gina (14 October 2001). "How we met: David Morrissey & Paul McGann". The Independent (Independent News & Media): pp. 5–6."Graduate directory ". Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Retrieved 11 June 2009.
After a year at RADA, Morrissey went back to Liverpool to perform in WCPC at the Liverpool Playhouse. He then did Le Cid and Twelfth Night with Cheek by Jowl, and spent two years with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), principally with director Deborah Warner for whom he played the Bastard in King John in 1988. He saw the role as a learning opportunity, as he had often wondered at RADA if he would ever have the chance to act in classical theatre. His performance has been described as "the most contentious characterisation of the production"; he received negative critical reaction from The Daily Telegraph and Independent critics, but a positive opinion from the Financial Times.Cousin, Geraldine (1994). Shakespeare in Performance: King John. Manchester University Press. . p. 18. In The Guardian, Nicholas de Jongh wrote, "The Bastard, who has the most complex syntax in early Shakespeare, half defeats David Morrissey. His slurred, sometimes unintelligible diction helps to deflate the Bastard, but his bawling rhetoric strikes as mere sham rather than fierce plain speaking."de Jongh, Nicholas (4 May 1989). "A strip-cartoon Shakespeare". The Guardian (Guardian Newspapers): p. 28. Morrissey also spent time with the National, where he played the title role in Peer Gynt (1990). Michael Billington praised the unkempt energy of his performance.Billington, Michael (2 March 1990). "Pleasure Peer". The Guardian (Guardian Newspapers): p. 33. During this time, he lived on the housing estate in White City, where he and his flatmates were the frequent victims of burglars.Clark, Steve (19 August 1996). "I couldn't get too shirty with thieves". Daily Mirror (MGN): p. 1 (features section) (archived at The Free Library. Retrieved 1 August 2011.).
Morrissey's second television role came in 1987 when he played the 18-year-old chauffeur George Bowman, whose obsession with his employer and lover Alma Rattenbury (Helen Mirren) leads him to murder her husband, in an Anglia Television adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play Cause Célèbre.Rosenberg, Howard (13 October 1988). "Sadness, Seduction Ignite `Mystery!'". Los Angeles Times (Tribune Company): p. C-10. At the end of the 1980s, Morrissey met director John Madden for the first time. Madden was looking for an actor who could portray an ordinary man who turns out to be a mass murderer, in his film The Widowmaker (1990). He knew Morrissey was right for the part in his first audition. The next year, Morrissey appeared as Theseus in an episode of The Storyteller directed by Madden ("Theseus and the Minotaur", 1991), and as Little John in Robin Hood (1991)."David Morrissey". British Film Institute. Retrieved 17 December 2008 (archived by WebCite on 24 January 2012). Robin Hoods cinema release clashed with that of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). The latter, starring Kevin Costner in the title role, was a box office hit and left Morrissey's version forgotten. Morrissey was out of work in film and television for eight months after it was released. Eventually, he was cast in a leading role as a CID officer in the BBC television drama Clubland (1991). He almost lost the role a week into rehearsals when his appendix ruptured. In order to keep the part, and a flat in Crouch End he had just bought, Morrissey performed while he still had his stitches in.Garfield, Simon (11 April 2004). "'I genuinely feel the work could all dry up tomorrow' ". The Observer (Guardian News & Media): p. 3 (Observer Review supplement). Retrieved 6 November 2008.
1990s His role in The Widowmaker led to him being offered and taking many obsessive character roles; he played police officers in Black and Blue, Framed, Between the Lines and Out of the Blue, and soldier Andy McNab in The One That Got Away (1996). Morrissey first met screenwriter Peter Bowker when he played Detective Sergeant Jim Llewyn in the second series of Bowker's Out of the Blue.Courtis, Brian (27 November 2005). "Holding all the aces ". The Sunday Age (Fairfax Media): p. 36 (Preview section). Retrieved 5 November 2008. In 1994, he played customs officer Gerry Birch in the first series of The Knock, and Stephen Finney in the six-part ITV series Finney. In Finney, Morrissey assumed the role originated by Sting in Stormy Monday (Mike Figgis, 1988). He was the first choice for the part and had to learn to play the double bass.Kingsley, Hilary (12 November 1994). "Introducing the family". The Times (Times Newspapers): p. SP/5.