Actor Lorcan Cranitch (65) lives in Dublin, where he was born and bred. He moved to London to study acting in 1980, where he lived for 17 years. He became famous as villain DS Jimmy Beck in ‘Cracker’ and has also starred in ‘Ballykissangel’, ‘Bloodlands’, ‘The Crown’, ‘Bad Sisters’, ‘Vera’, ‘Inspector Lewis’ and ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’, and on stage in Mark O’Rowe’s update of Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts’, Brian Friel’s take on Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters’ and Tom Murphy’s adaptation of his ‘The Cherry Orchard’.

​I’m the oldest and we grew up mainly in the Harold’s Cross area. Both my parents worked. When we were of an age where we could get ourselves to school, my mum went back to work in a jeweller’s shop and things like that. She did that almost until the day she died. They both came from a generation where that’s what you did. She loved her work, she could have retired, but she didn’t.