After playing the wicked King Joffrey on Game of Thrones, Irish actor Jack Gleeson was kind of in a bad place. He’d become too well-known, too much identified as the evil fictional ruler, to the point where it had started to affect his personal life and dealings with fans — the character was so deeply hated that people celebrated his on-show demise and made weird “reaction videos” that kind of got to the actor. Gleeson, his role on the series concluded, decided to stop acting altogether in 2014.
In the next few years, Gleeson pursued a life of academia, studying semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic. He courted a sweet girl, got into a serious and committed relationship and lived a quiet, low-key sort of life. He’s now married, and by all accounts lives a stable, normal life. He’s quite different from his villainous on-screen performance.
In order to remove himself even further from King Joffrey and in an attempt to look as different to the character as possible, Gleeson now sports longer hair and… a moustache. Now as for his passion for acting, it disappeared for a while but over the last two years or so, Gleeson has found back his desire to be on camera. First he did some small stage work, then some TV roles here and there. Soon enough, he discovered he still enjoyed it tremendously — moreso than the world of academics, in fact.
As of 2023, Jack Gleeson is set to star in an Irish film that will also feature Liam Neeson. He’s slowly but surely making his way back into the spotlight, in his own pace and on his own terms — he just doesn’t want to play evil anymore. He’s too good at it.
