Orla Fitzgerald is an Irish actress for stage and screen for over 25 years.
She received two nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Breakthrough Artist at the fourth annual Irish Film and Television Awards for her work as Sinéad Ní Shúilleabháin in Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Fitzgerald was nominated best actress in the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards (2013) for the role of Clare in Digging for Fire, written by Declan Hughes and directed by Matt Torney for Rough Magic. Most recently she has been embracing her Cork heritage in the role of Orla in The Young Offenders.
Training and early career Fitzgerald took drama classes in Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, placed there by her mother, who thought she was perhaps too shy. “It was a 90-minute workshop on a Saturday morning, where we did improv and plays. It was all about fun and being creative and I loved it,” the actress has said.
Selected filmography Crossed Lines, 2001 Strangers in the Night, 2002 The Wind That Shakes the Barley, 2006 Speed Dating, 2007 The Guarantee, 2014
TV work Love is the Drug, 2004 The Baby Wars, 2005 The Last Furlong, 2005 Holby Blue, 2008 Pure Mule: The Last Weekend, 2009 Law & Order: UK, 2009 The Young Offenders, 2018
Selected stage career The Comedy of Errors, Royal Exchange, Manchester Crestfall, Theatre503, London Pumpgirl, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh; 3 to 27 August 2006; Bush Theatre, London; 12 September to 14 October 2006 This Ebony Bird, Blood in the Alley Theatre Company, Ballydehob, Ireland The System; The Project, Raw Productions, Dublin The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish; The Ark, Dublin Playboy of the Western World; Royal Exchange, Manchester A Town Called F**cked; Last Serenade Theatre Company Macbeth; Second Age Theatre Company, Dublin A Quite Life; Peacock Theatre, Dublin The River; Meridian Theatre Company Who's Breaking?; Graffiti Theatre Company, Cork Laodamia; Merlin International Theatre, Budapest Disco Pigs; Corcadorca Theatre Company, Cork Othello; Everyman Theatre, Cork The Beauty Queen of Leenane; Lyric Theatre (Hammersmith), London (2021)
Selected radio career Enda Walsh’s 4 Big Days in the Life of Dessie Banks
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