Mike O'Neill (costume designer)

O'Neill was born in Manchester, the oldest of seven children. His mother had been a Tiller Girl, and has been described as an early show business influence.^[1] As a teenager he worked behind the scenes in Manchester theatres.^[2]

O'Neill studied theatre design at Nottingham University, and after graduation in the late 1960s, joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. For twelve years, he assisted the Head of Design, focussing on costume design and production.^[1] They produced six shows a year in Stratford, and O'Neill contributed colourwork, sampling, cutting and refining costumes.^[2] He worked on productions including Peter Brook’s The Dream, Buzz Goodbody’s Hamlet and Trevor Nunn’s Revenger’s Tragedy.^[1]

O'Neill's first film work was for Roman Polanski's Macbeth in 1971.^[1]

To establish himself in costume for film and television, O'Neill did "all sort of things... some of which were hysterically bad," but soon broke through with G.B.H. (1991, written by Alan Bleasdale), a contemporary drama shot in O'Neill's hometown of Manchester.^[2] This was followed by the ITV drama Prime Suspect, starring Helen Mirren.^{[citation needed]}

O'Neill assembled a "thoughtful and highly skilled team" – in the words of screenwriter Sandy Welch – who helped to bring detailed attention to small supporting parts as well as the main characters. This was most evident in Dickensian and social realist productions, for example Our Mutual Friend (1998), which won a Royal Television Award for Best Costume, and North and South (2004).^[1]

In the early 1990s, O'Neill met Samantha Horn, who became his costume design partner; the couple married in 1999. Together they were nominated for multiple BAFTA and Royal Television Society awards,^[2] and found success throughout the 2000s with lavishly costumed, high-end period dramas and literary adaptations, including Daniel Deronda (2002), starring Romola Garai as Gwendolen. Garai credited O'Neill with helping her find the character, and praised his "artistry, ambition, use of colour and attention to detail”.^[1]

In 2003, O'Neill and Horn won the BAFTA for Best Costume design for Charles: The Pride and the Passion, starring Rufus Sewell as King Charles II.^{[citation needed]} Although he used lustrous fabrics and jewel-like colours, O'Neill's purpose was to create believable, realistic characters, and costumes were at the service of that aim.^[1]

In 2005, O'Neill reunited with Prime Suspect star Helen Mirren for the miniseries Elizabeth I. The production was filmed largely in Lithuania, where Horn and O'Neill worked with local teams of tailors and costumiers. Jeremy Irons was only available at minute for fittings, so three costumes had to be produced within twenty-four hours when he arrived the day before shooting.^[2] Horn and O'Neill won a Primetime Emmy and a Costume Designers Guild Award for their work on the series.^[3]

In 2007, O'Neill returned to his Shakespearean days with a stage production of Macbeth, starring Sir Patrick Stewart. This version of the play, directed by Rupert Goold, was set in a twentieth century military dictatorship.^[4] Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington praised the production's "magnificently realised... plausible world", singling out Lady Macbeth's "kitchen pinny" as a tangible detail of realism.^[5]

The Damned United (2009) brought O'Neill back to the twentieth century in the North of England, an adaptation of David Peace's novel about Brian Clough, the real-life manager of football team Leeds United. O'Neills' final credit was for four episodes of Season 2 of BBC drama Accused, a contemporary drama starring many notable actors from British film and television.^{[citation needed]}