Brendan Gleeson
Brendan Gleeson (born 29 March 1955) is an Irish actor and film director. He is the recipient of three IFTA Awards, two BIFA’s, and a Primetime Emmy Award and has been nominated twice for a BAFTA Award, five times for a Golden Globe Award and once for an Academy Award. In 2020, he was listed at number 18 on The Irish Times list of Ireland’s greatest film actors. He is the father of actors Domhnall Gleeson and Brian Gleeson.
He is best known for his performance as Alastor Moody in the Harry Potter films (2005–2010). He is also known for his supporting roles in films such as Braveheart (1995), Michael Collins (1996), 28 Days Later (2002), Gangs of New York (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), Troy (2004), Suffragette (2015), Paddington 2 (2017), The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), and The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021). He is also known for his leading roles in films such as The General (1998), In Bruges (2008), The Guard (2011), Calvary (2014), Frankie (2019), and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the lattermost film.
He won an Primetime Emmy Award in 2009 for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in the television film Into the Storm. He also received a Golden Globe Award nomination for his performance as Donald Trump in the Showtime series The Comey Rule (2020). From 2017 to 2019 he starred in the crime series Mr. Mercedes. He received an Emmy Award nomination for Stephen Frears’ Sundance TV series State of the Union (2022).
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Brendan Gleeson Movies
Discover the best Brendan Gleeson movies. Explore the complete filmography, including top-rated classics, newest releases, and highest-grossing films starring Brendan Gleeson ranked by year and score.
1
Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)
Crime
Drama
Thriller
Arthur Fleck returns, still caught between the broken man he is and the figure Gotham has turned him into. Inside Arkham State Hospital, something shifts when he meets a woman...
Score
5.4
2
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Comedy
Drama
On a remote Irish island, a musician's casual decision to sever ties with his oldest friend spirals into something far darker and more destructive. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson navigate...
Score
7.5
3
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
Drama
Joel Coen photographs Shakespeare's darkest play in austere black and white, letting shadow and suggestion do the work of spectacle. A military commander encounters a prophecy, then a wife with...
Score
6.9
4
Paddington 2 (2017)
Adventure
Comedy
Family
Paddington Bear has found his footing in Windsor Gardens, charming neighbors and staying out of trouble, more or less. When he spots a rare pop-up book in Mr. Gruber's antique...
Score
7.5
5
Assassin’s Creed (2016)
Action
Adventure
Science Fiction
Callum Lynch has spent his life running from his past, but a shadowy organization called Abstergo has other plans for him. Strapped into a machine that reads inherited genetic memory,...
Score
5.4
6
Stonehearst Asylum (2014)
Horror
Mystery
Thriller
A freshly minted medical graduate arrives at a remote asylum brimming with professional ambition, only to find himself drawn into an unsettling dynamic with one of the institution's patients. As...
Score
6.8
7
Song of the Sea (2014)
Animation
Family
Fantasy
Ben discovers his younger sister carries an ancient magic when their sea-dwelling mother vanishes, leaving the siblings uprooted to their grandmother's urban apartment. Escaping city life, the pair ventures back...
Score
8.0
8
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Action
Science Fiction
Bill Cage is a military publicist, smooth-talking and combat-free, until a superior officer sends him to the front lines as punishment. He dies within minutes of landing. Then he wakes...
Score
7.6
9
Calvary (2014)
Drama
A rural Irish priest receives a chilling confession: someone plans to murder him as an act of vengeance. With a week to prepare, he confronts his past failures and the...
Score
7.1
10
The Smurfs 2 (2013)
Animation
Comedy
Family
Gargamel's latest scheme involves creating fake Smurfs to access their magical essence, but he needs the real deal. When he snatches Smurfette to Paris, using her knowledge of an ancient...
Score
5.8
11
The Company You Keep (2012)
Drama
Thriller
For decades, Jim Grant has lived quietly under an assumed name, building a law practice and raising a daughter in upstate New York. When a tenacious young reporter digs up...
Score
6.2
12
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012)
Adventure
Animation
Comedy
A ragtag crew of seafaring misfits sails under the command of an earnest pirate captain determined to outdo his hated rivals. Their quest bounces between tropical waters and the foggy...
Score
6.5
13
The Raven (2012)
Crime
Mystery
Thriller
When a serial killer begins recreating murders straight from Edgar Allan Poe's published works, Baltimore's finest turn to the literary master himself. Aging, ailing, and haunted by his own dark...
Score
6.3
14
Safe House (2012)
Action
Thriller
Tobin Frost spent ten years building a legend as a CIA fugitive, and the agency has never quite known what to do with him. When he finally surfaces and ends...
Score
6.5
15
The Guard (2011)
Action
Comedy
Crime
A vulgar Irish policeman from a sleepy rural town finds himself forced into an unlikely alliance with a buttoned-up FBI agent when a major drug operation threatens their quiet corner...
Score
7.0
16
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
Adventure
Fantasy
Without the shelter of Hogwarts, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are truly on their own. Grieving, hunted, and increasingly fractured by paranoia, the three friends set out across a bleak and...
Score
7.7
17
Green Zone (2010)
Action
Adventure
Drama
Baghdad, 2003. Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller keeps showing up to sites that intelligence swears are hiding weapons of mass destruction, and keeps finding nothing. No stockpiles, no chemical agents,...
Score
6.5
18
The Secret of Kells (2009)
Animation
Family
Fantasy
A young monk named Brendan ventures beyond the safety of his abbey walls to gather magical ingredients for an ancient manuscript. In the wild forest, he encounters Vikings, mythical beasts,...
Score
7.4
19
In Bruges (2008)
Comedy
Crime
Drama
Two assassins find themselves stranded in a medieval Flemish city, waiting for orders that never come. As they navigate cobblestone streets and Gothic architecture, their banter masks deeper reckonings with...
Score
7.5
20
Beowulf (2007)
Action
Adventure
Animation
Robert Zemeckis brings the Norse legend to motion-capture life as Beowulf, a Scandinavian warrior summoned to Denmark to confront Grendel, a monstrous creature terrorizing the kingdom. What begins as a...
Score
5.9
21
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
Adventure
Fantasy
Back at Hogwarts for his fifth year, Harry finds the wizarding establishment has chosen denial over truth. The Ministry refuses to acknowledge Voldemort's return, and the school has been handed...
Score
7.7
22
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Adventure
Fantasy
Nobody asked Harry Potter if he wanted to compete, yet his name came out of the Goblet of Fire anyway. Suddenly he is thrown into the Triwizard Tournament alongside older,...
Score
7.8
23
Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
Comedy
Drama
Kitten, a vivacious transgender woman with unbridled optimism, abandons her suffocating Irish village for the glittering chaos of 1970s London. Armed with little more than her wits, her wardrobe, and...
Score
7.2
24
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Action
Adventure
Drama
Grief sends a French blacksmith named Balian on a journey he never sought. Traveling to Jerusalem in the twelfth century, he discovers a birthright he barely understands and a city...
Score
7.0
25
The Village (2004)
Drama
Mystery
Thriller
A cloistered community in rural Pennsylvania maintains an elaborate fiction to protect itself from the outside world. When a young resident begins questioning the boundaries that confine them, he unwittingly...
Score
6.5
26
Troy (2004)
Action
History
War
When Paris of Troy seduces Helen from her Spartan throne, he ignites a conflict that will consume an empire. King Menelaus demands vengeance, but his brother Agamemnon recognizes something far...
Score
7.2
27
Cold Mountain (2003)
Adventure
History
Romance
When a Confederate soldier abandons the battlefield, scarred and hollow, he sets out on a brutal trek across war-ravaged countryside toward the woman he married before everything changed. Back at...
Score
6.9
28
Gangs of New York (2002)
Crime
Drama
History
Released from prison into 1860s Manhattan's brutal underworld, Amsterdam Vallon infiltrates the gang of William Cutting, the man who murdered his father. What begins as a vendetta evolves into something...
Score
7.3
29
28 Days Later (2002)
Horror
Science Fiction
Thriller
Jim wakes up alone in an abandoned London hospital, blissfully unaware that nearly a month has passed since a lab accident released something catastrophic into the population. The streets are...
Score
7.2
30
Mission: Impossible II (2000)
Action
Adventure
Thriller
Ethan Hunt finds himself entangled with a morally ambiguous thief while chasing a rogue IMF operative across the globe. The stakes couldn't be higher: a weaponized virus that could reshape...
Score
6.1
31
The Butcher Boy (1998)
Comedy
Drama
Francie's childhood in rural Ireland oscillates between innocent mischief and domestic horrors. His father's drunken rages and his mother's mental collapse leave him untethered from reality. As the boundary between...
Score
6.8
32
Michael Collins (1996)
Drama
History
Thriller
Neil Jordan's film charts the rise of Michael Collins from guerrilla operative to statesman, following his navigation of Irish independence during the tumultuous 1920s. As Collins brokered the treaty that...
Score
6.9
33
Braveheart (1995)
Action
Drama
History
When the woman he loves is murdered by an English garrison, Scottish farmer William Wallace does something reckless: he fights back. What begins as one man's grief quickly catches fire...
Score
7.9
34
The Field (1990)
Drama
In rural Ireland, an aging farmer's obsession with a plot of land he's tended his entire life becomes pathological when a wealthy American developer threatens to buy it at auction....
Score
7.0
Brendan Gleeson TV Shows
Browse the ultimate list of Brendan Gleeson TV shows. Find top-rated television series, critically acclaimed dramas, and hit shows starring Brendan Gleeson.
1
Spider-Noir (2026)
Action & Adventure
Crime
Mystery
The 1930s New York that Ben Reilly inhabits is all rain-slicked cobblestones, busted radiators, and cases that barely cover the rent. He used to be something more, the city's lone...
Score
8.4
2
The Comey Rule (2020)
Drama
War & Politics
James Comey's memoir becomes the framework for this two-part examination of the FBI director's fraught relationship with Donald Trump, spanning the 2016 election and its turbulent aftermath. Director Billy Ray...
Score
6.9
3
State of the Union (2019)
Comedy
Drama
Every week, Tom and Louise meet for drinks before heading to marriage counseling, and in these brief pub encounters, their relationship slowly reveals itself. Through accumulated moments and careful confessions,...
Score
6.9
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the highest-rated movies starring Brendan Gleeson?
According to aggregate user scores, the absolute best titles starring Brendan Gleeson are Joker: Folie à Deux, The Banshees of Inisherin, and The Tragedy of Macbeth.
How many movies and TV shows has Brendan Gleeson starred in?
Our database currently features a comprehensive filmography of 37 titles starring Brendan Gleeson, ranging from their earliest roles to the newest releases.
Are the movies starring Brendan Gleeson worth watching?
Yes! The overall filmography starring Brendan Gleeson maintains a strong average user rating of 7 out of 10 across all tracked titles.