John Travers

In 2005-6 John played James in 48 Angels, Marion Comer's unusual feature where Michael O'Dwyer (of the Irish Times) commented on John's great screen presence. Wilderness was the horror genre film where he played the vital role of Davy, & now he can be seen as Young Quinlan (Pete Postlethwaite is the older version) in Lord Attenborough's feature Closing the Ring. John has just returned from Germany where he worked with Colin Bateman & Roy Marsden on his feature in development, Mohamed Maguire, schooled by John Irvin et al for Moonstone. Out in 2008 was his next feature film lead role, Colin in Macdara Vallely's Peacefire. It's up with his best work.Earlier John had been named Best Actor at the Cherbourg Film Festival after the showing there on Friday 10th October 2003 of Aisling Walsh's incredible Song for a Raggy Boy. The film also won the audience award at this Normandy Film festival specialising in the best British and Irish recent releases. John attended press conferences with Iain Glen and Aidan Quinn at the Edinburgh and Cork Film Festivals, telling of his performance as Liam Mercier (lead boy). The feature sold by Lola Films for Subotica Entertainment played Sundance, Seattle, Tribeca, Newport Beach, Los Angeles, Karlovy Vary, Cork, Ghent, Lyubyana, Bergen, Gothenberg, Copenhagen, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Salerno festivals to brilliant effect, picking up eighteen awards and bringing massive praise to John. Its NI premiere was in the Belfast Festival on March 29th 2004 and then it played nationally from Friday April 9th. Dorothy Macgabhann cast it. The movie had played in the republic of Ireland from October 2003 and many territories worldwide thereafter. Late 2005 John played James in 48 Angels directed by Marion Comer. This feature was produced by Robert Medema and John McDonnell for Reflected Light Pictures. John also played a boy called John in the pilot for Oranges are Blue, the Lab-Ky-Mo film to be shot here next year for Kalm Boy Films, and Colin in the original pilot for Peacefire. He made appearances in Man about Dog, the Treasure Films shoot of Pearse Elliott's script directed by Paddy Breathnach and Pearse's own film, The Mighty Celt opposite Robert Carlyle. He also played the boy in the Oscar-nominated short film Everything in This Country Must, directed by Gary McKendry. He was also in the Irish feature 5 Day Shelter, out in 2009, produced by Villi Ragnarsson. Michael was a character he improvised for the HARP Inclusion Education DVD produced by Morrow, & he also made a Youth Justice Conference DVD for Inferno, and an anti-knife attack cinema campaign for SpotOn & Genesis, an Adidas campaign for MJZ opposite several footballers including Jermaine Defoe, Del Piero, Djibril Cisse, Ashley Cole and David Trezeguet, shot in St. Albans by Fredrik Bond; also a Dublin anti-litter campaign and an Invest NI ad. He was photographed as a paperboy and with brother Mark en famille for 2 BT photo campaigns produced by A.V. Browne. Not bad for a great young lad who was a boxer, not an actor 9 years ago. From the New Lodge in Belfast, John was born the middle of 3 children (Fiona is older and Mark is younger) to mum & dad Kate & John (Bap), and attended St. Patrick's college Belfast (as had Martin McCann earlier). His birthdate was 31st January 1989. Another astounding piece of work by this able performer has been an NSPCC radio campaign featuring John, again as a troubled kid, this time suicidal. The campaign got widely noticed and aided children in difficulty by offering them a chance to help themselves through a website. Much more to come from this pleasant, intelligent, very real young man, so un-actorish that his great skill barely shows, such is his unerring intuition & handle on what is real, painful & vulnerable about youth. In theatre he has been in work for Belfast companies Replay, Tinderbox, Jigsaw and C21, for directors Mick Duke, Anna Newell, Peter Quigley and Paul Kennedy. Show less «