Jack Vettriano's painting The Singing Butler, where research later showed that the artist had used a pose by Brady to form the 'lady in red'
Orla Brady (born 28 March 1961) is an Irish actress.
The second of four children born to Dublin publican Patrick (who used to own the Oak Bar in Temple Bar), and his acting-frustrated wife Catherine, who had appeared in amateur productions at the Gate Theatre. Educated at a Roman Catholic convent school, as a teenager she was insecure, worried about her weight and felt partly constrained by her strict Catholic upbringing. At around 16, Brady read Germaine Greer and Simone de Beauvoir, and decided she wanted to act.
Feeling herself technically incapable of acting, she drifted - travelling, working as a waitress and shop assistant: My 20s were torture. I found men terrifying. I didn't know how to relate to them and, because of that, there was no way I could have stood on a stage and asked people to look at me. I just wasn't comfortable in my skin.
She moved to London, England, and undertook some part-time modelling. One piece of day work for which she was paid £50 was to pose for a DIY-painting guide The Illustrator's Figure Reference Manual. After the original of Jack Vettriano's painting The Singing Butler was sold at auction in 2004 for £750,000, it was revealed that the painter had used the manual to from his figures for the painting, including Orla for the 'lady in red.'
In 1986 aged 26, she applied via the French Embassy in London for a bursary to study theatre in Paris. After struggling through her French language interview, she studied for a year at the L'École Philippe Gaulier and secured a place at the École Internationale de Mimodrame de Paris founded by Marcel Marceau.
After graduation, she returned to Dublin and immediately won the role of Adela in the House of Bernarda Alba at the Gate Theatre, and then worked with Cambridge-based physical theatre company, Balloonatics, and discovered the fun of theatre through alternative productions of Finnegans Wake and Hamlet.
Her first piece of professional work in England was in Blinded by the Sun at the Royal National Theatre, and developed a career based on both Irish and British located theatre, television an movies. These have included the BBC's A Love Divided as Sheila Cloney, Mistresses and has narrated on Freaky Eaters.
From 2001 she decided to spend a period in Los Angeles, the United States where she has appeared mainly in televisions series, including the short-lived Family Law. She has also starred in Nip/Tuck, a US drama about plastic surgeons as Dr. Jordan, a female plastic surgeon who, unusually for the series, declined sex with Dr. Christian Troy. She later starred as Claire Stark, the divorced ex-wife of James Woods in hit series Shark.
Having had a low-volume string of relationships, Brady moved to Los Angeles in 2001 for work, and decided to remain single. Invited to a friend's party, the English wildlife photographer Nick Brandt became fascinated by her passionate berating of George W. Bush. The couple married in December 2002 in a ceremony with a view of Mount Kilimanjaro.
