List of Famous people born in Leinster, Ireland
Niall Horan
Niall James Horan is an Irish singer and songwriter. He rose to prominence as a member of the boy band One Direction, formed in 2010 on the British singing competition The X Factor. Following the band's hiatus in 2016, Horan signed a recording deal as a solo artist with Capitol Records.
Paul Mescal
Paul Mescal is an Irish actor. He is best known for his starring role in the miniseries Normal People (2020), which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
Evanna Lynch
Evanna Patricia Lynch is an Irish actress and activist. She is best known for portraying the role of Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter film series.
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, most famously stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, his published letters and occasional journalism.
Katie Taylor
Katie Taylor is an Irish professional boxer and former footballer. She is a two-weight world champion and the current undisputed lightweight champion, having held the WBA title since 2017; the IBF title since 2018; and the WBC, WBO, and Ring magazine titles since 2019, as well as having held the WBO junior-welterweight title in 2019. Following her victory over Delfine Persoon in 2019, she became one of only eight boxers in history to hold all four major world titles in boxing—WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO—simultaneously.
Ernest Shackleton
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Graham Norton
Graham William Walker, better known by his stage name Graham Norton, is an Irish television and radio presenter, comedian, actor, author, and commentator. Well known for his work in the UK, he is a five-time BAFTA TV Award winner for his comedy chat show The Graham Norton Show and an eight-time award winner overall. Originally shown on BBC Two before moving to other slots on BBC One, his chat show succeeded Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in BBC One's prestigious late-Friday-evening slot in 2010.
Aidan Turner
Aidan Turner is an Irish actor. He played the roles of Ross Poldark in the 2015–2019 BBC adaptation of The Poldark Novels by Winston Graham, Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Desperate Romantics, Ruairí McGowan in The Clinic, and John Mitchell in the supernatural drama series Being Human. He played Kíli in The Hobbit film series.
Laura Whitmore
Laura Whitmore is an Irish television presenter, model, and actress. She is known for presenting I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! Now! and Survival of the Fittest. In January 2020, she began presenting Love Island and its spinoff series Love Island: Aftersun. In September 2020, she replaced Mel B as a team captain on Celebrity Juice.
Walter O'Brien
Walter O'Brien is an Irish businessman and information technologist. He was also the executive producer and loose inspiration of the television series Scorpion. He is known for various self-reported claims including a childhood IQ of 197 which have been scrutinized.