Victoria Smurfit

Award-winning Irish actress Victoria Smurfit has won acclaim in her home country, across the water in Britain, and further afield in America thanks to her roles in the likes of Once Upon a Time, Trial & Retribution, and Ballykissangel. Her most recent high-profile roles include a guest role in the 2022 series sequel to the 1976 Nicolas Roeg movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth. On the big screen, her role as Diana in the 2018 film The Lears (based on Shakespeare’s King Lear) won her an Irish Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Born in Dublin, Smurfit first came to fame in the BBC series Ballykissangel, which became essential Sunday night watching for millions of viewers during the latter half of the 1990s and was also a hit in Ireland and America. She followed that up with a recurring role in another quintessential British series of the time: Cold Feet. She also made her first film appearances in big titles such as The Beach and About a Boy. For six years from 2003, she played DCI Roisin Connor, one of the central characters in the final six series of ITV’s gripping crime drama, Trial & Retribution.

In 2014, Smurfit landed her first major American series role when she was cast as Cruella de Vil in ABC’s Once Upon a Time, appearing in three seasons. The role saw her nominated for her first IFTA Award in 2016. Recent roles have seen her appear in both American and British productions, with a part in the Jed Mercurio-produced Northern Irish crime series Bloodlands¸being one such example.