THE BIG MAN (REMEMBERING BJ HOGG)

BJ Hogg was one of those actors who was not really known outside Northern Ireland.

However in his homeland, he was an accomplished theatre and screen actor - best known for his role as the loyalist Big Mervyn in the BBC Northern Ireland sitcom, 'Give My Head Peace', appearing in 73 episodes.

But he also worked with filmmakers of the calibre Mike Leigh, Danny Boyle, Alan Clarke, Thaddeus O'Sullivan, Richard Attenborough and Steve McQueen.

Born in Lisburn in 1955, his father was a player in Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyard and his mother ran a store in his hometown.

He originally trained to be a chef and his introduction to acting came through a different route from most of his contemporaries.

A showband musician, he heard that Belfast's arts theatre was putting on a musical production called 'The Rockin' 50s' and needed people who could act, sing and play instruments.

It was enough to earn him his Equity card and he never looked back, cuting his teeth in the Lyric Theatre and with independent theatre companies, appearing onstage alongside Adrian Dunbar.

That career would also see him perform onstage in Moscow and Minsk.

His first experience of film came in the 1984 Mike Leigh BBC Play for Today 'Four Days in July' about Northern Ireland's marching season as seen through the eyes of a Protestant and a Catholic couple.

Leigh's final film for the BBC, his fellow cast members included Stephen Rea, Brid Brennan, Charlie Lawson and Des McAleer.

It also received good reviews.

That year, he also appeared in an ITV production of Graham Reid's 'The Hidden Curriculum' with Denys Hawthorne, Jimmy  Ellis, Colm Meaney and Adrian Dunbar - having previously performed it at the Lyric.

There would be a minor role one year later in another ITV one-off drama, Douglas Livingstone's 'We'll Support You Ever More' in which John Thaw played the father of a British soldier trying to find the truth of how his son died.

He joined a cast that included Dearbhla Molloy, James Nesbitt and Lise Ann McLaughlin in another Graham Reid drama 'Ties of Blood' which was set in a military hospital.

Hogg was cast as a foreman in Bill Miskelly's 1986 children's film 'The End of the World Man' with John Hewitt, Leanne O'Malley, Ian McElhinney, James Nesbitt and Geraldine Hughes and also appeared in Peter Omrod's charming rural Irish motorcycle comedy 'Eat the Peach' with Stephen Brennan, Catherine  Byrne, Eamon Morrissey, Niall Tobin and Joe Lynch.

He appeared too with Dan Gordon and Colum Convey in a Troubles sitcom for the BBC 'Foreign Bodies', penned by Bernard Farrell and Graham Reid, about love across Belfast's sectarian divide.

In 1987 up and coming director Danny Boyle cast Hogg as a painter in Anne Devlin's one-off BBC drama 'Venus de Milo Instead' with Lorcan Cranitch, Jeanane Crowley and Tony Doyle.

There was also an appearance in a five part BBC1 Troubles drama series 'Crossfire' with Tony Doyle, Denys Hawthorne and Alan Devlin.

Hogg would work in 1989 with the great English film and television director Alan Clarke on 'Elephant' which would go on to inspire the acclaimed Gus Van Sandt US high school shooting movie of the same name.

Essentially depicting an successioof shootings, the film rammed home the horror of the Troubles while also highlighting how immune news audiences in Britain had become to their impact when reported on TV.

There would be roles in other high profile dramas at the tail end of the Troubles including Peter Kosminsky's controversial ITV drama of the John Stalker investigation 'Shoot to Kill' with Jack Shepherd, David Calder and TP McKenna and the BBC2 series 'Children of the North' with Michael Gough, Tony Doyle, Patrick Malahide, John Kavanagh and Adrian Dunbar.

He would appear in the short-lived BBC sitcom 'So You Think You've Got Troubles' with Jimmy Ellis, Harry Town and Emer Gillespie in which Warren Mitchell played a London Jewish businessman who is sent toanage a Belfast tobacco factory.

On the small screen, there would be roles in the McGann brothers' Donegal costume drama 'The Hanging Gale' for the BBC in 1995 and the smuggling BBC TV movie 'Runway One' with Peter Capaldi.

He was also involved as a writer and performer on BBC Northern Ireland's ambitious satirical show 'The Show' which was fronted by David Dunseuth, Gerry Anderson and initially Rhonda Paisley, the daughter of the Democratic Unionist Party leader, the Reverend Ian Paisley.

Thaddeus O'Sullivan cast him in his movie about loyalism 'Nothing Personal' with John Lynch, James Frain, Ian Hart and Michael Gambon.

In Stephen Burke's acclaimed 28 minute short film '81', about a French TV crew covering the hunger strikes, he joined Philippe Misischi, Lalor Roddy and Paula McFetridge.

However it was his role in another short in 1996 about a Protestant widower in Derry-Londonderry with a young daughter who becomes obsessed with Irish dancing that was to really melt hearts.

Terry Loane's 'Dance Lexie Dance' was arguably Hogg's finest moment onscreen and it became the first Northern Ireland short film to land a nomination at the Oscars and he would go to LA for the ceremony.

Loane's short showed Hogg at his subtle best as a loving father and he gelled perfectly with Kimberley McConkey in a touching post-ceasefires story about breaking through sectarian stereotypes.

He would be cast as Colonel Reece in Dee McLachlan's 1997 movie 'The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli and Baloo' with Roddy McDowall which largely went unnoticed.

Hogg would return to notching up roles in Troubles movies like Robert Dornhelm's 1997 IRA prison break drama 'A Further Gesture' with Stephen Rea, Roseanna Pastor, Alfred Molina and Brendan Gleeson, Jim McBride's intelligence drama 'The Informant' with Cary Else's, Timothy Dalton and Sean McGinley and Marc Evans' dark 1998 loyalist paramilitary drama 'Resurrection Man' with Stuart Townsend, James Nesbitt, Brenda Fricker and John Hannah.

In Roger Michell's 1998 movie 'Titanic Town', he joined Julie Walters, Ciaran Hinds, Nuala O'Neill and Lorcan Cranitch ina tale of a West Belfast family growing up amid the turmoil of the early Troubles, while in David Caffrey's big screen adaptation of Colin Bateman's 'Divorcing Jack', he joined a cast led by David Thewlis, Rachel Griffiths, Jason Isaacs and Robert Lindsay in a tongue in cheek look at the peace process.

He nabbed a role in Terence Ryan's 1998 movie 'The Brylcreem Boys' about the detention of German and Allied soldiers in the neutral Irish state during the Second World War, with Gabriel Byrne, Joe McGann, Jean Butler and Angus MacFadyean.

There was a role as a minister in Colm Villa's forgettable 1999 thriller 'Sunset Heights' with Toby Stephens, Jim Norton, James Cosmo, Emer McCourt and Patrick O'Kane.

Hogg also appeared in the BBC2 adaptation of Robert MacLiam Wilson's Belfast novel 'Eureka Street' with Mark Benton, Vincent Regan and Dervla Kirwan and BBC1's disappointing 1916 Easter Rising drama 'Rebel Heart' with James d'Arcy, Vincent Regan and Bill Paterson.

As Northern Ireland's film industry blossomed, he appeared in many movie and TV productions including Terence Ryan's 2002 adaptation of Spike Milligan's 'Puckoon' with Sean Hughes, Elliott Gould and Gryff Rhys Jones, Terry Loane's 2004 feature 'Mickeybo and Me' with Julie Walters, Ciaran Hinds, Adrian Dunbar and Gina McKee, Richard Attenborough's 2007 romantic drama 'Closing the Ring' with Mischa Barton, Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, Pete Postlethwaite and Martin McCann and Steve McQueen's extraordinary 2008 debut feature 'Hunger' with Michael Fassbender, Stuart Graham and Liam Cunningham.

In 2004 and 2005, he toured the US with the Ulster Scots musical 'On Eagle's Wing'.

In one of the first big Hollywood productions to come to Belfast's Titanic Paint Hall in the city's shipyards, Hogg played one of the guards for Bill Murray's Mayor in Gil Keenan's 2008 fantasy 'City of Ember' with Saoirse Ronan, Tim Robbins and Toby Jones.

He was a Royal Adviser in David Gordon Green's 2011 fantasy comedy 'Your Highness' with James Franco, Natalie Portman and Danny McBride and played See Addam Marbrand in the first season of HBO's 'Game of Thrones', one of the chief knights of Charles Dance's Tywin Lannister.

Hogg apoeated as a police constable in the BBC1 comedy drama 'Blandings' with Jennifer Saunders and Timothy Spall in 2014, in the TG4 Irish language newspaper drama 'Scup', in two episodes of the BBC1 medical soap 'Holby City' , in ITV's Northern Ireland true crime drama 'The Secret' with James Nesbitt and Genevieve O'Reilly and in Allan Cubitt's dark thriller 'The Fall' with Gillian Anderson, Jamie Dornan and John Lynch.

In 2018, he secured a part in BBC1's production of 'The Woman in White' with Jessie Buckley, Ben Hardy, Dougray Scott and Charles Dance and also featured this year in 'The Windermere Children', a one-off BBC drama with Iain Glen, Romola Garai and Tim McInerny about survivors of the Holocaust.

Hogg's recurring role was as Mervyn in the BBCNI sitcom 'Give My Head Peace' and while the show was not everyone's cup of tea, there was no doubting the affection with which he and his character were held by its fans.

Coming on the back of the death of another Northern Irish acting stalwart Roma Tomelty, Hogg's passing has come as a major shock to the province's tight knit acting community.

But he left a body of work which lifted a lot of souls over four decades in film, television and theatre.

(BJ Hogg passed away at the age of 65 on April 30, 2020)