Brendan Gleeson won the Best Actor Award at the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for his performance in his West End debut in The Weir.
The Weir which marked the actor's first theatre performance in 10 years, sees Gleeson play one of the four men who share stories in a remote Irish pub with a woman who has recently moved to the area, as they seek to impress her with some "gripping, haunting and deeply unsettling," stories, according to the logline.
The logline also adds: "Little do they know that she has a profoundly personal story of her own, the sharing of which will leave them all shaken", while describing The Weir as a "testament to the need for human connection, the possibility of hope, and the enduring power of storytelling".
Alongside Gleeson, other cast members include, Love/Hate star Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Sean McGinley, Owen McDonnell and Kate Philips.
The Weir had two sold out runs at Dublin's 3Olympia Theatre and at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End last year.
The actor won the award for starring in Conor McPherson's pub drama, holding off stiff competition from nominees Paapa Essiedu and Bryan Cranston from All My Sons, as well as Paddington stars Aris Shah and James Hameed.
Speaking of roles, Brendan Gleeson once revealed that he almost lost his breakthrough role in the historical epic, Braveheart.
The actor revealed that he appeared in Juno and the Paycock at the Gaiety Theatre, where he was noticed by none other than Mel Gibson, aka William Wallace.
"And then I nearly lost the part," Gleeson said. "We had a run-through of Juno first in Dublin and then we were supposed to go to Chicago and Mel said, `do you think you can still do Braveheart and I said, `I might, yeah".
Gleeson continued: "He rang the theatre and told them but I said, `I have two weeks to go here and they won’t let me go . . . ' and I thought, I could just go anyway and do the movie but that would be a really dumb thing to do and also really unethical in my hometown, I’d never work again".
"So, I lost the part in Braveheart but then they decided to switch some things around and I got to do it in the end".
More on this from Nova here.
