Stuart Townsend facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Stuart Townsend
Townsend at the Beverly Hills special screening of Battle in Seattle on 22 September 2008.
Born	(1972-12-15) 15 December 1972 (age 51) Howth, County Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1993–present
Partner(s)	Charlize Theron (2002–2009)
Children	2
Parent(s)	Peter Townsend (father)

Stuart Townsend (born 15 December 1972) is an Irish actor. He portrayed Lestat de Lioncourt in the film adaptation of Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned (2002), and Dorian Gray in Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003). In 2007, he directed the film Battle in Seattle.

Early life and career

Townsend was born in Howth, County Dublin, the son of Lorna Hogan, an Irish model, and Peter Townsend, an English professional golfer. His younger brother, Dylan, is also an actor.

Stuart attended the Gaiety School of Acting, Dublin, and made his non-professional stage debut in its 1993 production of Colin Teevan's Tear Up The Black Sail. The following year he made his professional stage debut in True Lines, directed by John Crowley, which opened in Kilkenny, before moving to the Dublin Theatre Festival and on to the Bush Theatre in London. His early film roles were in Irish short films, including Godsuit and Summertime, before landing a role in the feature length film, Trojan Eddie, a 1996 Anglo-Irish co-production. In 1997 he starred in the British film, Shooting Fish.

..... He briefly returned to the London stage in 2000, in the Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending, starring as Val Xavier, alongside Helen Mirren as Lady Torrance, before landing roles in several major films. He appeared in Queen of the Damned as the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, and in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as Dorian Gray. Townsend was hired to play the part of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, but was replaced by Viggo Mortensen the day before principal photography began.

In 2005, he starred alongside Gabrielle Union in Night Stalker, the remake of the 1974 ABC TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. He portrayed Carl Kolchak, an investigative reporter looking into his wife's murder. Night Stalker was abruptly cancelled by ABC after six episodes due to bad viewing figures, with some critics reportedly saying he was too young compared to Darren McGavin in the original series. ..... He also made an uncredited cameo in Æon Flux (2005). Townsend starred alongside Ryan Reynolds in Chaos Theory (2007). The same year, he made his directorial debut with Battle in Seattle, a portrayal of the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 which was undermined by anti-globalisation protesters. The film's cast included Charlize Theron, Ray Liotta and Woody Harrelson, but enjoyed only limited release and no blockbuster support.

Townsend was set to play Fandral in Kenneth Branagh's Thor, but was replaced in January 2010, due to unspecified creative differences. He appeared in the ABC thriller, Betrayal, the second season of Salem, and a 2017 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2021, Townsend starred in the films The Martini Shot and Grace and Grit.

Personal life

Townsend's father, Peter, was a golfer, who played in the 1969 and 1971 Ryder Cups. He has a brother, Dylan Townsend, and sister, Chloe Townsend, from his father's first marriage to Lorna Townsend, who died in 1994 of a brain haemorrhage. Townsend has two half-siblings, Hugo and Ella, from his father's second marriage, to Swedish-born Sofia. He dated actress Charlize Theron after meeting her on the set of 2002's Trapped. The couple lived together in Los Angeles and Ireland. They said they considered themselves married without an actual marriage, with Townsend stating, "We didn't have a ceremony. I don't need a certificate or the state or the church to say otherwise. So no, there's no big official story on a wedding, but we are married.... I consider her my wife and she considers me her husband." Theron split from Townsend when they came back on day two of a planned ten-day holiday in Mexico in January 2010.

In May 2015, Townsend's brother said that Stuart had settled down in Costa Rica, where he had bought some land and was living with a woman from that country, who was expecting their second child at that time. In 2019, Townsend was living in Santa Monica with his wife and two children, Desmond and Ezra, and was arrested after a domestic dispute.

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1993	Godsuit	John Slattery
1996	Trojan Eddie	Dermot
1997	Shooting Fish	Jez
	Under the Skin	Tom
1998	Resurrection Man	Victor Kelly
1999	Simon Magus	Dovid Bendel
	Wonderland	Tim
	The Venice Project	Lark/Gippo the Fool
	Mauvaise passe	Tom
2000	About Adam	Adam
2002	Queen of the Damned	Lestat de Lioncourt
	Trapped	William Jennings
2003	Shade	Vernon
	The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen	Dorian Gray
2004	Head in the Clouds	Guy Malyon
2005	The Best Man	Olly Pickering
2005	Æon Flux	Monican Rebel
2007	Chaos Theory	Buddy Endrow
2008	Battle in Seattle		Writer and director only
2009	Maggie Hill	Terrence James
2013	A Stranger in Paradise	Paul
2021	Grace and Grit	Ken Wilber
2021	Christmas at Castle Hart	Earl Aidan Hart
2021	Apache Junction	Jericho Ford
TBD	The Martini Shot	Philip	Completed

Key

Denotes films that have not yet been released

Television

Awards and nominations

See also

In Spanish: Stuart Townsend para niños