Roma Downey

Downey was born and raised in Derry, Northern Ireland, in the Bogside district. Roma is named after her two grandmothers, Ro from Rose and Ma from Mary, joined to make Roma. She attended Thornhill College, a Catholic girls school. Her mother, Maureen O'Reilly Downey, a housewife with an interest in the performing arts, died from a heart attack at age 48 when Downey was ten years old. Her father, Patrick Downey, was a mortgage broker. Her father died when Downey was 20. Originally, she planned to be a painter and earned a Bachelor of Arts at Brighton College of Art. Roma studied BA (Hons) Expressive Arts at Brighton Polytechnic. Based at the Falmer campus, she combined Art and Drama for her degree. She then went on to study acting in London at The Drama Studio. She joined the Abbey Players, based at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and toured the United States in a production of The Playboy of the Western World. Downey moved to New York City after an agent, whom she met during the tour of The Playboy of the Western World, suggested she had potential for success there. She took a job as a coat checker at an Upper West Side restaurant, before getting cast in Broadway shows.

The production led to a nomination during the Broadway run for the Helen Hayes Best Actress Award in 1991. She also starred on Broadway in The Circle with Sir Rex Harrison and also at the Roundabout Theater and The Public Theater in New York City.

Downey played the role of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the American television miniseries A Woman Named Jackie (1991) which won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries in 1992.