Age: 42
male
Joseph William Gilgun (born 9 March 1984) is an English actor known for several roles, including that of Vinnie O'Neill in the Sky One series Brassic, Eli Dingle in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale, Jamie Armstrong in the long-running ITV soap opera Coronation Street, Woody in the film This Is England (2006) and its subsequent spin-off series, and Rudy Wade in E4's Misfits. From 2016 to 2019, he starred in the AMC television adaptation of the Vertigo comic Preacher as the Irish vampire Cassidy. Gilgun was born in Chorley, Lancashire, to Judith and Andrew Gilgun. He grew up in Rivington, Lancashire, as part of a working-class family with his two younger sisters, Jennie Seddon and Rosie Thomson. Gilgun attended Rivington VA Primary School and Southlands High School. He has dyslexia and ADHD, which he describes as the "biggest pain of [his] life" and in interviews has openly discussed depression and anxiety. He started drama workshops at the age of eight, following advice from an educational psychologist, and was described as having "exceptional talent". He also trained at the Laine Johnson Theatre School and the Oldham Theatre Workshop. When he was 10, he got his first TV acting role in Coronation Street. He stayed with the show until he was thirteen years old. Gilgun studied A-Levels at Runshaw College. Outside of odd jobs and a few roles in small theatre productions, Gilgun worked as a plasterer until returning to acting full-time with Emmerdale in 2006.
Summer 1989, deep in the English countryside — during a time of mass unemployment, class war, and rebellion . Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men — Calvert, an ex-soldier traumatized by his experience in the Falklands War, and his affable friend Redbone — set out nightly in a decrepit camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Under cover of darkness, they traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns, painstakingly avoiding damaging the wheat to yield designs so intricate that their overnight appearances inspire awe amongst a mystified public. And as the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation—and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold. But as harvest-time beckons—and as media and the authorities begin to take too much interest in their work—Calvert and Redbone have to race against time to finish the most stunning and original crop circle ever conceived: the Honeycomb Double Helix. Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the destruction of the English countryside, class inequality and the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.
