Ciaran Hinds will be Mance Raider in Game of Thrones

James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly has just revealed exclusively that the role of Mance Rayder has finally been cast – with none other than Ciarán Hinds!

You will of course know him best from Rome, where he played Julius Caesar. After Tobias Menzes (as Edmure), this is the second Rome alumnus joining the cast.

Career

Hinds began his professional acting career at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in a 1976 production of Cinderella.

He remained a frequent performer at the Citizens' Theatre during the late 1970s and through the mid-1980s. During this same period, Hinds also performed on stage in Ireland with the Abbey Theatre, the Field Day Theatre Company, the Druid Theatre, the Lyric Players' Theatre and at the Project Arts Centre.

In 1987, he was cast by Peter Brook in The Mahabharata, a six hour theatre piece that toured the world, and he also featured in its 1989 film version. Hinds almost missed the casting call in Paris due to difficulties renewing his Irish passport.

In the early 1990s, he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He appeared in the title role of the RSC's 1993 production of Richard III, directed by Sam Mendes; Mendes turned to Hinds as a last minute replacement for an injured Simon Russell Beale. Hinds gained his most popular recognition as a stage actor for his performance as Larry in the London and Broadway productions of Patrick Marber's Tony Award-nominated play Closer.

In 1999, Hinds was awarded both the Theatre World Award for Best Debut in NYC and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Special Achievement (Best Ensemble Cast Performance) for his work in Closer. He was on stage in 2001 in The Yalta Game by Brian Friel at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. He appeared in the Broadway production of The Seafarer by Conor McPherson, which ran at the Booth Theatre from December 2007 through March 2008. In February 2009 Hinds took the leading role of General Sergei Kotov in Burnt by the Sun by Peter Flannery at London's National Theatre. 

Hinds returned to the stage later in 2009 with a role in Conor McPherson's play The Birds, which opened at Dublin's Gate Theatre in September 2009.

Hinds made his feature film debut in John Boorman's Excalibur (1981). He played Captain Frederick Wentworth in Jane Austen's Persuasion (1995), Jonathan Reiss in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003), John Traynor in Veronica Guerin (2003), and Firmin in the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (2004). Hinds also played Carl, a cover-up professional assisting a group of assassins, in Steven Spielberg's political thriller, Munich (2005).

In 2006, he appeared in Michael Mann's film adaptation of the 80's television show, Miami Vice, and as Herod the Great in The Nativity Story.

In the 2006 film Amazing Grace, Hinds portrayed Sir Banastre Tarleton, one the chief opponents of abolition of the slave trade in parliament. He starred in Margot at the Wedding, alongside Nicole Kidman, Jack Black and Jennifer Jason Leigh, in a drama-comedy about family secrets and relationships. He also appeared in There Will Be Blood (2007) directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

On television, Hinds portrayed Gaius Julius Caesar in the first season of BBC/HBO's series, Rome (2006). He has also been featured in a number of made-for-television movies, including the role of Michael Henchard in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (2004), for which he received the Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series.

Additional television performances include Edward Parker-Jones in the crime drama series Prime Suspect 3 (1993), Abel Mason in Dame Catherine Cookson's The Man Who Cried (1993), Jim Browner in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes episode The Cardboard Box (1994), Fyodor Glazunov in the science fiction miniseries Cold Lazarus (1996), Edward Rochester in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1997), the Knight Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1997) and a portrayal of the French existentialist Albert Camus in Broken Morning (2003).

Hinds has also featured in two notable television docudramas: Granada Television's 1990 docudrama Who Bombed Birmingham? in which Hinds portrayed Richard McIlkenny, a Belfastman falsely imprisoned for an IRA bombing; and HBO's 1993 docudrama Hostages, where he portrayed Irish writer and former hostage Brian Keenan. Hinds starred opposite Kelly Reilly in Above Suspicion, a TV adaptation of Lynda La Plante's detective story, which aired in the United Kingdom in January 2009; he came back again as DCI Langton for Lynda La Plante's sequels The Red Dahlia in 2010, Deadly Intent in 2011 and Silent Scream in 2012.

Hinds has performed in audiobook and radio productions as well. He performed as Valmont in the BBC Radio production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and Hinds also narrated the Penguin Audiobook Ivanhoe. He also performed in Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter's Tale as part of The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare, an audio production of Shakespeare's plays which won the 2004 Audie Award for Best Audio Drama. He read the short story "A Painful Case" for the Caedmon audio version of James Joyce's Dubliners.

Hinds played the role of Albus Dumbledore's brother Aberforth (replacing Jim McManus, who played him in a cameo in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, the final film in the Harry Potter franchise. Also in 2011, he appeared as David Peretz in the 1997 sections of The Debt along side Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson. Hinds played Roy Bland in the 2011 adaptation of the John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

In September 2011, Hinds returned to the Abbey Theatre Dublin, to star as Captain Jack Boyle in an acclaimed revival of Sean O Casey's Juno and the Paycock alongside Sinead Cusack as Juno. The production transferred to the National Theatre of Great Britain in November 2011 for a three month run. He played the role of Joe in the film The Shore (2011) directed and written by Terry George. The Shore won the Best Short Film, Live Action category at the 84th Annual Academy Awards (The Oscars) in 2012.

Hinds will portray Mance Rayder in the third season of Game of Thrones.