- published: 19 Aug 2010
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Patrick Connolly Bergin (born 4 February 1951) is an Irish actor.
Patrick Bergin grew up with a working class upbringing in the Drimnagh district of Dublin, Ireland. Bergin learned social responsibility from his father Paddy Bergin, a Labour Party politician who had once studied to be a priest with the Holy Ghost Fathers in Blackrock, Ireland. He is one of five sons (Pearse, Emmet, Patrick, Connolly and James Bergin). Bergin left Dublin for London in 1973; and by the time he was 17 he was in London running a theatre group. Bergin worked on building sites and at a library. He studied at night and completed a degree in education from North London Polytechnic. Bergin worked as an English teacher for several years before forming his own theatrical company because no one else would have him.
In 1980, Bergin decided to pursue acting full-time and he found work in repertory theatre. For much of the Nineties it seemed like no one in Hollywood would have him. So he made his own way; he worked in diverse films such as a trilogy of Yeats plays; Morphine and Dolly Mixtures, for which he won a Welsh Best Actor Award and Durango, based on John B Keane's novel; hosting TnaG's Silín Draíochta; and narrating Patrick Cassidy's Famine Concert. After (Sleeping with the Enemy) 1991, his reputation grew and he was offered the role of Robin Hood with Uma Thurman. He describes 1996 as the lowest point in his career, a time when he rarely received any phone calls for movie roles.
Robin Hood is a heroic outlaw in English folklore who, according to legend, was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. Traditionally depicted as being dressed in Lincoln green, he is often portrayed as "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor" alongside his band of Merry Men. Robin Hood became a popular folk figure in the late-medieval period, and continues to be widely represented in literature, films and television.
The first clear reference to "rhymes of Robin Hood" is from c1377, the late-14th-century poem Piers Plowman, but the earliest surviving copies of the narrative ballads that tell his story date to the second half of 15th century (i.e. the 1400s), or the first decade of the 16th century (1500s). In these early accounts, Robin Hood's partisanship of the lower classes, his Marianism and associated special regard for women, his outstanding skill as an archer, his anti-clericalism, and his particular animosity towards the Sheriff of Nottingham are already clear.Little John, Much the Miller's Son and Will Scarlet (as Will "Scarlok" or "Scathelocke") all appear, although not yet Maid Marian or Friar Tuck. It is not certain what should be made of these latter two absences as it is known that Friar Tuck, for one, has been part of the legend since at least the later 15th century where he is mentioned in a Robin Hood play script.