Eddie Marsan

Eddie Marsan was made a patron of Humanists UK for his exploration of the human condition through the arts.

Actor

Photo of Eddie Marsan

Award-winning actor Eddie Marsan was born and raised in East London. His father was a lorry driver and his mother a school dinner lady and teaching assistant. He left school at 16 and after briefly working as an apprentice printer went to train at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.

His early television career included appearances on Casualty, The Bill, Grange Hill and Silent Witness. In film he has appeared in Gangster No. 1, Gangs of New York and Mission Impossible III, but it was his portrayal of paranoid and volatile driving instructor, Scott, in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) that won him the National Society of Film Critics Award, and London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Now 48, Marsan can count filmmakers such as Edgar Wright, Martin Scorsese, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Terrence Malick, Michael Mann, Richard Linklater, J.J Abrams and Steven Spielberg as collaborators.

He once answered the question, 'What makes you unhappy?' with 'Prejudice, in all shapes and forms.'