Belfast-born and RADA-trained Ciaran (pronounced KEER-awn) Hinds has become best known for his appearances in several period dramas. Immediately after finishing drama school, the tall, swarthy actor traveled throughout Europe finding work wherever he could. Eventually he landed in Paris where Peter Brook cast him in "The Mahabharata" in 1987. But it was his portrayal of Shakespeare's "Richard III" in 1993 that catapulted Hinds to the front ranks in costume epics.

Hinds made his film debut as one of the medieval knights in "Excalibur" (1981), John Boorman's take on the Arthurian legend. He went on to play one of a pair of brothers in love with the same woman in turn-of-the-century Ireland in "December Bride" (1990) and a professor in the 1950s Ireland in "Circle of Friends" (1995). Hinds was effective as a well-to-do former naval officer who re-encounters his former fiancée in "Persuasion" (also 1995), based on the Jane Austen novel. More recently, he was a clergyman whose relationship with a headstrong Australian heiress causes difficulties for them both in Gillian Armstrong's "Oscar and Lucinda" (1997).

On the small screen, Hinds has also excelled at period pieces. He first garnered notice as one of the British kidnap victims held in Lebanon in the "HBO Showcase" production "Hostages" (1993). As the suave and slick operator of a child-care center who may or may not be a pederast and killer in "Prime Suspect 3" (PBS, 1994), Hinds was eerily chilling in a rare contemporary role. Returning to costumers, he cut a dashing figure as Brian de Bois Guilbert in "Sir Walter Scott's 'Ivanhoe'" (A&E, 1997) and was suitably imperious as Rochester in "Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre'" (A&E, 1997).

Hinds returned to the big screen, appearing in the Scottish indie “The Life of Stuff” (1997), then starred in the Italian-made “Il Tempo Dell’amore” (1999), a romantic drama about the three stages of love: the first spark, getting to know one another and the birth of strong and deeper feelings. In the first third, Hinds was an English soldier during the time of the Boer War who saves an Englishwoman (Juliet Aubrey) on her way to visit her brother (Tam Williams), also an English soldier. Hinds rounded out the millennium with two more features, “The Lost Son” (1999), a British-made thriller about a Parisian detective (Daniel Auteuil) who stumbles onto a child pornography ring while looking for a wealthy couple’s missing son, and “The Lost Lover” (1999), in which he played a grieving father living in Tel Aviv and trying to cope with the tragic death of his 3-year-old son.

After playing an axe-wielding murderer whose crime is reinvestigated a hundred years later by a determined photojournalist (Catherine McCormack) in “The Weight of Water” (2000), Hinds appeared as King Aeson in NBC’s miniseries “Jason and the Argonauts” (2000), then played the son of a woman (Eileen Atkins) who hosts a séance that brings back the troubled and forgotten spirit of her tragically killed stepmother in “The Sleeper” (BBC, 2001). In “The Sum of All Fears” (2002), he played the new president of Russia whose curious rise to power reignites old Cold War fears in the U.S. government, while a terrorist group pits the former adversaries against each other in a nuclear standoff that has devastating consequences. Hinds received good notices for his role in “Road to Perdition” (2002) in which he played a mobster who buries his brother and challenges a powerful Irish boss (Paul Newman) only to be killed himself. Having been confined to playing refined gentleman or tough guys, Hinds’ performance in “Road to Perdition” opened new doors for the previously unknown actor.

Hinds next starred in “Thursday the 12th” (Bravo, 2003), an ambitious miniseries that focused on one 24-hour period in which four suspected murderers give their individual takes on the slaying of a member of the prominent Bannister family. In “The Mayor of Casterbridge” (A&E, 2003), Hinds tackled the role of Michael Henchard, a once-poor drunkard who sold his wife and only daughter for a few quid, but later redeems his life after swearing off booze and rising up the social food chain. When his life reaches completion with his pending marriage to a fetching young bride, Henchard’s former wife and adult daughter arrive, causing him to fall back into his unseemly ways. After a small role in “The Statement” (2003), a political thriller starring Michael Caine as a former Nazi executioner pursued for war crimes, Hinds was the henchman of a powerful drug lord (Gerard McSorley) who feeds information to an ambitious, and ultimately doomed investigative reporter (Cate Blanchett) in “Veronica Guerin” (2003).

Hinds continued to be in demand, playing a mad scientist hell-bent on world domination in the action sequel, “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life” (2002). In “Calendar Girls” (2003), he was the loving husband of a free-spirited woman (Julie Walters) who, along with a group of middle-aged gals from the deadly boring Women’s Institute, decides to shake things up and pose nude for a calendar to raise money for leukemia. Hinds showed up as one of the theater owners in Joel Schumacher’s overwrought adaptation of “Phantom of the Opera” (2004), then played the methodical clean-up man on a Mossad hit squad targeting the masterminds behind the 1972 terrorist attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Steven Spielberg’s taut thriller, “Munich” (2005).

In “Rome” (2005- ), HBO’s expensive and ambitious hour-long series about the internal machinations of the upper strata of the Roman Empire during its shift from republic to imperial power, Hinds portrayed Gaius Julius Caesar—architect of the Eternal City’s radical social and political change—with a quiet intensity that often belied the fiery and sometimes flamboyant behavior often associated with the dictator. He then costarred in Michael Mann’s gritty and disaster-plagued “Miami Vice” (2006), playing an FBI agent who recruits two undercover cops, Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jaime Foxx), to find a traitor within the bureau by posing as drug smugglers.