Ian Hart

Ian Davies (born 8 October 1964), better known by his stage name Ian Hart, is an English actor. His most notable roles have been in One Summer (1983), Backbeat (1994), Land and Freedom and Nothing Personal (1995), Michael Collins (1996), Liam (2000), as Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), as Ludwig van Beethoven in Eroica (2003), My Mad Fat Diary (2013–2015), as Father Beocca in The Last Kingdom (2015–2020), and The Responder (2022). Early life Hart was born Ian Davies, in the Knotty Ash district of Liverpool on 8 October 1964. He has two siblings and was brought up in an Irish Catholic family. He attended Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School in Liverpool's West Derby suburb, and was a member of the Everyman Youth Theatre, Liverpool, in his earlier years. He studied drama at the now-defunct Mabel Fletcher College of Music and Drama in Liverpool's Wavertree district. Career In 1991, Hart played John Lennon in the low-budget independent film The Hours and Times. He played Lennon twice more: a slightly younger Lennon during The Beatles' 1960-62 Hamburg period in Backbeat (1994), In 1995, Hart portrayed a POUM militia volunteer in Ken Loach's Spanish Civil War film Land and Freedom. The same year, he played psychotic Northern Irish Protestant gangster 'Ginger' in the Thaddeus O'Sullivan directed 1995 Irish-British drama film Nothing Personal, alongside John Lynch, James Frain and Michael Gambon, for which, Hart won the Volpi Cup for best supporting actor at the 52nd Venice International Film Festival.