Roma Downey Biography

This section contains Roma Downey Biography
Roma Downey was born in Ireland on May 6, 1960. She has two sisters, named Ann Flood and Jacinta McLaughlin. She attended the Brighton Art College in England, and also studied acting at the London Drama Studio. When she graduated from the London Drama Studio, she was voted Most Promising Student of the Year. Roma Downey engaged in stage plays before she became a professional actress.

Roma Downey’s first theater production was an environmental piece called Tamara in 1987. In the same year, she also started work on television for a soap opera on ABC called One Life to Live. Roma Downey was a member of Dublin’s Abbey Players, and when they went to the United States to tour the production of The Playboy of the Western World, she started to receive attention for her acting. In 1991, she played Jackie Onassis for a television movie called A Woman Named Jackie. She continued to do television movies such as Devlin, Getting Up and Getting Home, both in 1992, and Hercules and the Amazon Women in 1994.

In 1994, producers finally took note of Roma Downey’s acting, and cast her as Monica, the lead role in the series Touched By An Angel. Her portrayal in the television series is what Roma Downey is most known for. She was cast alongside Della Reese, and the two became very close, as Della Reese is even the godmother of Roma Downey’s child. The show lasted from 1994 to 2003. In 1995, she married director David Anspaugh, to whom she bore a daughter, although the marriage lasted only three years. This was her second marriage, her first being to Leland Orser in 1987.

Touched By An Angel earned Roma Downey several awards and nominations. She won the TV Guide Award for Favorite Actress in a Drama, and was nominated two Golden Globe Awards for two consecutive years in the category of Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series for a Drama. Also for two years in a row, she was nominated an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Roma Downey married another man, television producer Mark Burnett, in 2006. Della Reese officiated the wedding, as she is an ordained minister. She also officiated the wedding to David Anspaugh. Roma Downey’s more recent television films include Sons of Mistletoe, Second Honeymoon, The Test of Love, A Secret Life, Monday After the Miracle, and Borrowed Hearts.

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