Orla Brady

Orla Brady was born in Dublin, the daughter of Catherine and Patrick Brady, one of four children. At one time, her parents were the owners of an establishment called Oak Bar, in Temple Bar, Dublin. She lived in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland, from birth until the age of seven. She was educated at a convent of the Ursulines in Cabinteely, Dublin.

Brady began training in performance in 1986, with a year in Paris; she studied at L'École Philippe Gaulier, and secured a place at Marcel Marceau's École Internationale de Mimodrame de Paris. As she spoke of the time in interview, "there was a lot of clowning around, buffoonery and fencing. It was then that my own style kind of blossomed." Brady began her career touring with Balloonatics Theatre Company, in productions of Hamlet and Finnegans Wake. Returning to Dublin after studying in Paris, she performed the role of Adela in House of Bernarda Alba in 1989 and Natasha in a 1990 production of Three Sisters, both at the Gate Theatre. After moving to London, she played Kate in Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come!, which later transferred from the King's Head Theatre to the West End. Brady performed as Ghislane in Stephen Poliakoff's Blinded by the Sun, staged at the Royal National Theatre in England in 1996.

Brady's first television role was a minor one as a bank clerk in the series Minder; her first film part followed in 1994 when she was cast as Vanessa in Words Upon the Window Pane.

Substantial roles have included the RTÉ-BBC co-production of A Love Divided, where she portrayed Sheila Cloney, a woman whose conflict with the Catholic Church over her child's education leads to an anti-Protestant boycott, a story based on real events in 1950s Fethard-on-Sea in County Wexford, for which she won the 1999 Golden Nymph Best Actress Award. She also played one of the four lead characters in the BBC drama series, Mistresses, portraying lawyer Siobhan Dillon. She has appeared in RTÉ's Proof, and had roles in films such as Words Upon the Window Pane (1994), The Luzhin Defence (2000), How About You (2007), and 32A (2007).

Since moving to California in 2001, Brady has also appeared in Family Law, where she played Naoise O'Niell, a series that ran for 3 years on CBS. She also starred in Nip/Tuck, a US drama about plastic surgeons (in which she played Dr. Jordan), and starred as Claire Stark in Shark (2008). In 2008, she appeared in "Firewall", the second episode of the BBC series Wallander. She also appeared as Meredith Gates, a fleecing art collector who herself is conned in the first series of the British series Hustle. Commencing in 2009, Brady portrayed Elizabeth Bishop, the wife of Walter Bishop and the mother of Peter Bishop in the Fox television series Fringe. In 2010, she played Catherine in the TV series The Deep, alongside James Nesbitt, and starred as Katie Dartmouth in the TV series Strike Back.

In 2012, she appeared in the ITV series Eternal Law as Mrs Sheringham, an angel who fell in love with a human and became mortal, and played Taryn in the Sky One series Sinbad. In late 2013, she appeared as the Countess Vera Rossakoff in the television adaptation of The Labours of Hercules, part of the final series of Agatha Christie's Poirot alongside David Suchet. Brady appeared in a special production in the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who, the 25 December 2013 Christmas special, The Time of the Doctor (as the character Tasha Lem). In 2014, she filmed Banished, playing Anne Meredith.

In 2015, Brady appeared as architect Eileen Gray in Irish director Mary McGuckian's The Price of Desire, which was in festivals in 2016 (and found a digital distributor in 2020). From 2017 to 2019, she had a main role in the AMC martial arts drama series Into the Badlands as Lydia. Brady had a recurring role in a season of the American Horror Story franchise, portraying Dr. Hopple in American Horror Story: 1984, the ninth season of the FX horror anthology television series.

As of 2022, Brady has had a recurring role in the science fiction television series, Star Trek: Picard, as Laris, wife of the now-deceased Zhaban (Jamie McShane), the two being former members of the Romulan Tal Shiar and now, workers in the wine production and home of Picard at his Chateau.