A Northern Irish actor. He made his feature film debut playing talent agent Fintan O'Donnell in Hear My Song (1991). His first significant film role came when he appeared as pig farmer 'Pig' Finn in Waking Ned (1998). In Lucky Break (2001), he made his debut as a film lead playing prisoner Jimmy Hands. The next year, he played Ivan Cooper in the television film Bloody Sunday, about the 1972 shootings in Derry. He has also starred in Murphy's Law (2001–2007) as undercover detective Tommy Murphy - a role that was created for him by writer Colin Bateman. In 2007, he starred in the dual role of Tom Jackman and Mr Hyde in Steven Moffat's Jekyll, which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination in 2008. He starred alongside Liam Neeson in Five Minutes of Heaven (2009), and was one of three lead actors in the television miniseries Occupation (2009) and The Deep (2010). He also starred in the movies Outcast (2010) and Emilio Estevez's The Way (2011), and has been cast in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit (2012/13).