Irish actor Paul Mescal has picked up a Bafta nomination for his role in Hamnet, but how much do you know about this rising star of acting?
We are firmly in awards season now and, just days after the Oscar nominations were announced, we have the shortlist for the Bafta Awards.
Once again, Hamnet has scored well in the nominations, with Jessie Buckley following up her Oscar nod with one from Bafta. You can read more about Jessie here. But this time, her co-star, Paul Mescal – a notable omission from the Oscars shortlist – has also been nominated.
Paul’s nomination will be greeted enthusiastically by his legions of fans. But how much do you know about this actor who has risen to fame over the past few years? Here are some facts you might not know.
Paul first appeared on stage aged 16
Paul grew up in a town in County Kildare in Ireland, going to the local school there. It wasn’t until age 16 that Paul first appeared on stage – when he took on the lead role in a school production of Phantom of the Opera.
This lit a fire in Paul and he later went on to audition for and gain admission to The Lir Academy, a drama school, at Trinity College Dublin. He took a Batchelor of Arts course in acting and graduated in 2017, by which time he had got himself an agent.
He gave up Gaelic football after a horror injury
Before he found fame, Paul was a talented Gaelic football player, playing age group teams for Maynooth GAA club in his hometown and for Kildare, where he received praise for his strength and skills as a defender. It was thought that Paul could have gone on to have an impressive career in the game, but a horror injury – a broken jaw – meant that, mindful of his developing acting roles, he decided to quit the game.
Paul’s first TV appearance was in a sausage commercial
Paul’s big break was starring as Connell in TV series Normal People. But that wasn’t his first appearance on TV – that came in an advert for Denny’s, a Irish brand of sausages. In the clip, Paul’s character enjoys a sausage before deciding on the spot to take a trip to a random place on the globe – which turns out to be in Ireland.
Paul can speak Irish
Paul maintains strong links to Ireland. He can speak Irish fluently and, while he moved to London in 2020 to further his career, he has since bought a house in Ireland, where he likes to spend time when he isn’t working.
Paul’s chain has its own Instagram account
Throughout Paul’s breakthrough role in Normal People, his character wore a distinctive chain around his neck, and this garnered almost as much attention as the sex scenes in the series did. So famous did the chain get that it even had its own Instagram account, which got more than 175,000 followers. Paul took this in good humour, joking in an interview that he’d be slightly embarrassed if the chain ended up with more followers than he had, adding that it would probably happen at some point.
He already has multiple Bafta award nominations
While it is only six years since Paul starred in his breakout role in Normal People, since then he has been nominated for several Bafta awards and been successful in some of them. The Bafta nomination for Hamnet is his third in the film category, after nominations for Aftersun (2023 for best supporting actor) and All of us Strangers (2024 for best actor). He won a TV Bafta in the Best Actor category for Normal People in 2021 and won a Bafta Scotland award for Aftersun in 2023.
