An English actor and director. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before acting with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Throughout the 1990s, he often portrayed policemen and soldiers, although he also took other defining roles such as Bradley Headstone in Our Mutual Friend (1998) and Christopher Finzi in Hilary and Jackie (1998). More film parts followed, including roles in Some Voices (2000) and Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), before he played the critically acclaimed roles of Stephen Collins in State of Play (2003) and Gordon Brown in The Deal (2003). Since then, he has had leading roles in Sense and Sensibility (2008), Red Riding (2009) and Five Days (2010), acted in the films Nowhere Boy (2009) and Centurion (2010), and produced and starred in the crime drama Thorne (2010).