Biography

Eddie Marsan was born in Stepney, East London, to a lorry driver father and a school employee mother, and raised in Bethnal Green. He served an apprenticeship as a printer before becoming an actor twenty years ago. During this time he has worked with directors such as Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg, Terrence Malick, Woody Allen, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, J.J. Abrams, Peter Berg, Guy Ritchie and Richard Linklater.

He has collaborated with Mike Leigh on three films: Vera Drake (2004), for which he won the British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting actor; Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), for which he also won a BIFA for best supporting actor as well as the London Film Critics Circle Award and the National Society Of Film Critics; and he has just completed Mike Leigh's latest film, A Running Jump (2012). He was nominated for an Evening Standard Film Award for best actor for The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009).

He is a patron for the School of the Science of Acting and Kazzum, a children's theatre company that promotes the acceptance of diversity.

He is married to the make-up artist Janine Schneider (aka Janine Schneider-Marsan) and they have four children.
- IMDb mini biography by: Robert Knight

I sometimes think if I had gone to Oxford or Cambridge and looked like a handsome young guy who could be in an Evelyn Waugh novel or something, I'd be a massive movie star. But there's a longevity to what I do. It's more reliable. Someone isn't deciding that I'm the next big thing. Because if they're deciding I'm the next big thing, they can decide that someone else is the next big thing.

I used to do a lot of comedy. I don't know what happened. I think it's my face.

I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination. The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character. I was lucky because when I started acting, it was doing jobs above pubs. I learned to act in anonymity so by the time people saw me, I knew what I was doing. I was crap for years but no one saw me being crap. It's a trade you learn.

...British actors, we have a tradition, I think it comes from weekly rep [repertory company], where we learn the lines and dodge the furniture. And also we have a tradition where we serve the writing. So when we get a script, our point of reference is the writing.

I don't do television. And that's not a choice, it's just for some reason it's never fitted, they've never wanted me, really. ...British TV is very very introverted. They have, it's very small circles. They watch TV, they don't watch movies. (November 2008)