Joseph Mawle's Main TV Roles Show Character(s) Merlin (UK) Alvarr Ripper Street (UK) Det. Insp. … Troy: Fall of a City (UK) Odysseus The Passion (UK) Jesus Women in Love (UK) Gerald Crich

Main Movie Roles

BIOGRAPHY:

Joseph Mawle (born March 21,1974) is an English actor. Mawle is best known for his roles as Benjen Stark in Game of Thrones, Det. Insp. Jedediah Shine in Ripper Street, Firebrace in Birdsong and Jesus Christ in The Passion.

Born in Oxford. He grew up in a Victorian manor house on a farm outside Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire. He is one of three children from a family with a history of nine generations of farming in Warwickshire. His mother was a teacher. His father Richard still farms the land.

He attended The Croft prep school on the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon where he was diagnosed as severely dyslexic and as a result he went from the ages of 13 to 16 at a boarding school for special needs. Mawle left the school at 16 to become an actor, but contracted labyrinthitis, leaving him 70 per cent hearing-impaired in the upper register and with tinnitus. He persuaded the director of the local college at Stratford-upon-Avon to let him study for a BTEC in performing arts while doing an assortment of jobs such as fitness instructor and dish-washer. He also did some acting for the Box Clever Theatre Company and in his own production of Solo Hamlet. He won a scholarship to study at the Bristol Old Vic's theatre school.


TRIVIA:

• He is partially deaf, having suffered hearing loss, due to a virus, at the age of 16. At this time his parents split up and he lived alone in a caravan.
• Graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 2002.