Born into an Irish family who had moved from Dublin to Birmingham after WWII, he grew up on the notorious Ladywood Estate. At 15, he left for London to study acting. His earliest break came in 1991 when he was cast in Derek Jarman's Edward II (1991), at the same time he was cast as DC Rosper in the award winning television series Prime Suspect (1991). He then went on to play the stuttering psychopath Sean Kerrigan in Cracker (1993) with Robbie Coltrane in 1993 and he has continued to be cast in award winning productions.

A recognisable face in television and feature films, he has become known as a solid character actor, with the ability to transform, examples of which are as Szalas in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002) and as the deformed hunchback, Ephialtes, in 300 (2006),