Liam O'Brien

Born and raised in Limerick in Ireland, Liam worked and toured with the city's Island Theatre Company before landing his first agent in the year 2000 and moving to Dublin. His first professional work however was 5 years before at only 15 years old, playing the lead in the BBC/RTE co-production Edward No Hands by Dermot Bolger. After some choice theatre roles and some commercial work in Dublin, a production of Brian Friel's Translations at the Library Theatre in Manchester took him to the UK for the first time. Only due there for 8 weeks, he landed the series regular role of Ethan Blake in ITV's long running drama Emmerdale, which he played for nearly 3 years. Since then he has worked in large scale internationally touring theatre such as the Olivier winning production of The Rat Pack: Live from Las Vegas and Edward Hall's Propeller company touring Shakespeare throughout Europe and the USA. He also founded Bottom Dog Theatre company in his hometown of Limerick in 2009 and has produced 15 shows to date - alternating between director, producer and actor in various productions. An acclaimed singer too, he has become one of Ireland's leading crooners in the style of heroes Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, and tours shows like his own Crooning at Christmas (first performed in 2004) and big band performances throughout the UK, such as The Kings of Swing. He most recently performed the Irish premiere of Eric Bogosian's one man play Drinking In America, touring to 18 venues across Ireland.