Learn more about Paul Mescal's career ahead of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

The Normal People and Gladiator II star reprises his role as Stanley Kowalski at the Noël Coward Theatre in the West End for three weeks in February.

Irish actor Paul Mescal is one of the biggest success stories of recent years. Born in 1996 in Maynooth, north County Kildare, Mescal initially aspired to be a footballer but discovered acting after an injury. He trained at Dublin’s Lir Academy of Dramatic Art and began his career as a stage actor.

Mescal’s mainstream breakthrough came in 2020 when he was cast as diffident student Connell Waldron in the television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones. The production was a huge talking point during lockdown and earned Mescal a BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

Mescal made his film debut in The Lost Daughter (2021) directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, co-starring Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, and Dakota Johnson. He played a man accused of sexual assault in God’s Creatures and an anxious single father in Aftersun, for which he was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA. He starred opposite Andrew Scott in the romantic fantasy All of Us Strangers and played the husband of Saoirse Ronan in science fiction thriller Foe.

Mescal is currently thrilling audiences as Lucius Verus in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II. Forthcoming film projects include historical drama The History of Sound; William Shakespeare in Hamnet, adapted from the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, and Franklin Shepard in Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, which is being made over a 20-year period by Richard Linklater.

In February, Mescal will reprise his Olivier-winning role as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire for three weeks only at the Noël Coward Theatre, prior to a limited run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. Read on to learn more about Mescal’s theatre work in Ireland and in London.

Book A Streetcar Named Desire tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Debut (2017-18)

Prior to graduating from drama school, Mescal made his professional stage debut as tragic millionaire Jay Gatsby in an interactive, immersive interpretation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age classic The Great Gatsby at Dublin’s Gate Theatre. The Irish Times described his Gatsby as “a butterfly of self creation”. At the same venue, his played the Prince in an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Red Shoes over the Christmas period.

Four plays in one year (2018)

In 2018, Mescal made his London debut in in Sean O’Casey’s revolutionary epic The Plough and the Stars at the Lyric Hammersmith. Set during the 1916 Easter Rising, Mescal played the supporting role of Lieutenant Langon, a civil servant and lieutenant of the Irish volunteers. At the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, he then played Bryan in Asking For It, the stage adaptation of Louise O’Neill’s novel about a woman whose life is permanently changed following an act of sexual violence.

Mescal made his Shakespeare debut as Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Kilkenny Arts Festival and shared the role of Stephen Dedalus, James Joyce’s alter ego, in an adaptation of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at the Dublin Theatre Festival. The Irish Times said that “The hero's constant rebirth in the shape of another actor thrusts us beyond the book's national interests, revealing Stephen not just as an artist but as an Everyman.”

On the verge of stardom pre-lockdown (2020)

Shortly before lockdown hit (and Normal People was released), Mescal starred in Martin McDonagh’s bloody satire The Lieutenant of Inishmore at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre. Mescal played Mad Pádraig (the role played by Aidan Turner in the most recent West End production), who seeks revenge for the death of his cat, Wee Thomas. The Irish Times called the production “very, very funny with a good ensemble and an impressive one-liner count”.

A Streetcar Named Desire (2022-3, 2025)

Returning to the stage as a fully fledged star, Mescal, known for his performances as sensitive young men, took on the role of the brutish Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’s classic melodrama A Streetcar Named Desire. Rebecca Frecknall’s direction at the Almeida Theatre (which transferred to the West End’s Phoenix Theatre) opposite Patsy Ferran as Blanche and Anjana Vasan as Stella. While very different to Marlon Brando, who immortalised the role on stage and screen, Mescal proved himself to be every bit as thrillingly dangerous and animalistic and was rewarded with an Olivier Award.

If you missed out the first time round, Mescal, Ferran, and Vasan will be reprising their roles for three weeks only at the Noël Coward Theatre, prior to taking the show to New York. It’s an irresistible opportunity and it’s so rare to get a second chance with a star of this calibre.

Book A Streetcar Named Desire tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Photo credit: Paul Mescal in A Streetcar Named Desire. (Photo courtesy of production)