Why Beric From Game Of Thrones Looks So Familiar

Like many other actors, Richard Dormer got his start on the stage—in fact, he's starred in over two dozen theater roles, many of which he wrote himself. In 2002, one of his plays resulted in Dormer's big break when his portrayal of controversial Irish snooker star Alex Higgins in Hurricane garnered rave reviews and accolades over its three-year run. Higgins himself was a fan of the play, attending several performances and striking up a friendship with Dormer. Following Higgins' battle with throat cancer and subsequent death in 2010, Dormer revived the play for a last hurrah at the Belfast Opera House in order to give "a final farewell to a true genius and a legend."

Based on a true story from the era of The Troubles in Ireland, the first half of the 2009 Irish drama film Five Minutes of Heaven recreates the events that led to a real-life murder in 1975. Back then, Alastair Little was 17 years old, and had been a member of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force for three years. When orders were given to target Catholics in a series of bloody reprisals, Little murders 19-year-old Jim Griffin in their town of Lurgan, Northern Ireland. Griffin's 8-year-old brother Joe is forced to watch helplessly as Jim is killed in cold blood. Their mother later blames Joe for not saving his brother somehow.

The second half of the film focuses on the present-day, where reconciliation efforts are being made around the nation. Five Minutes of Heaven imagines a fictional reconciliation between the now-adult Joe Griffin (James Nesbitt) and his brother's murder Alastair Little (Liam Neeson). The meeting is to take place while live cameras are rolling for the news, but Griffin decides that he'd rather stab Little in the back than shake his hand. Joe's friend Michael (Dormer) tries to talk him out of his plan, but Joe is determined to get his revenge.

A year after his appearance in Hidden, Dormer returned to television when he appeared in two episodes of the Cinemax/BBC television series Hunted, joining Game of Thrones alumni Stephen Dillane (Stannis Baratheon) and Indira Varma (Ellaria Sand) in the production. Dormer played venture capitalist Lewis Conroy, who's present during a murder committed by his business partner, Jack Turner. Conroy later attempts to track down the woman (lead character Sam Hunter) who witnessed their crime, in order to find out exactly how much she knows.

In 2014, Dormer starred in another film about the Troubles when he appeared in the historical thriller '71. When a unit of the British Army is deployed to Belfast, they find themselves stationed in a dangerous neighborhood with Catholics on one side and Protestants on the other. Adding the volatile situation, they're tasked with helping the controversial Royal Ulster Constabulary police force check houses for firearms and other weapons—causing the multiple factions within the neighborhood to turn violently against them. When the unit is forced to withdraw from the area, one soldier (played by Jack O'Connell) is accidentally left behind. Literally fighting for his life to escape from the mob, O'Connell is assisted by a Catholic man (Dormer) and his daughter, who aren't aware that he's a British soldier—a revelation that puts them all in a very difficult position.

In the 2014 sports dramedy Shooting for Socrates, Dormer reunites with fellow Game of Thrones stars Conleth Hill (Lord Varys) and Art Parkinson (Rickon Stark) for a film that manages to weave together the love of football (soccer for us crazy Americans) with the social upheaval of mid-80s Northern Ireland, which was still in the depths of The Troubles. 

Parkinson plays Tommy, who is doing his best to grow up in the riot-torn city of Belfast. While he doesn't really understand all the social and political reasons behind all the fighting, there's one thing that he does care about: the upcoming World Cup match between the extreme underdog Northern Ireland football team and their opponents from Brazil. Dormer plays Arthur, a philosophizing dockworker who does his best to raise his son Tommy and help him understand what's really going on in the world around them. They are joined by a large cast of supporting characters, including Conleth Hill as long-time Irish Television football commentator Jackie Fullerton.

Also in 2015, Richard Dormer starred as a sleazy Hollywood director in the Polish experimental action movie 11 Minutes from director Jerzy Skolimowski. The film chronicles the lives of a number of Warsaw residents, including a low-level drug runner, an elderly artist, a hot-dog vendor, a skyscraper window washer, a student, a team of paramedics, and an actress and her jealous husband. As director Richard Martin holds an "audition" for the actress in a hotel room, the rest of the characters go about their lives. But for 11 minutes, their paths will all intersect in some very unexpected (and in many cases, life-changing) ways.

If you're a fan of the BBC period action drama The Musketeers (based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas), you may have spotted Dormer when he appeared in the season three episode "Brothers in Arms" in 2016. The series chronicles the adventures of the legendary "Three Musketeers"—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—and d'Artagnan, the young man who joins them in hopes of one day becoming a Musketeer himself. In this episode, the Musketeers are tasked with escorting Gaston (the brother of King Louis XIII) back to Paris. Along the way, someone steals letters Gaston was carrying that contain potentially ruinous information.

In the episode, Dormer plays Christophe, a tavern owner who becomes accidentally embroiled in royal drama when the letters are stolen in his establishment, which leads Gaston to lash out violently and kill three of Christophe's friends. As the hunt begins for the thief, Christophe soon finds himself forced into a very difficult decision to save his inn and his family from Gaston's vengeance.