Denise Gough

Denise Gough is an Irish actress. She was born in Ennis, County Clare and is the seventh of eleven siblings. One of her sisters is the actress Kelly Gough. She trained as a soprano before leaving Ireland for London as a 15-year-old. She studied at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA) in Wandsworth, south London In 2012, she was nominated for the Milton Shulman Award for Outstanding Newcomer at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for her performances in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms and Nancy Harris’s Our New Girl. In 2014, she played the role of Julia in The Duchess of Malfi, the inaugural production at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London. At the Royal National Theatre in 2015 she played the role of a recovering substance user in Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places and Things, directed by Jeremy Herrin. She reprised the role at the Wyndham’s Theatre in 2016, and subsequently won the Olivier Award for Best Actress. She returned to the Royal National Theatre in 2017 playing the role of Harper in Marianne Elliot’s revival of Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America, for which she won the 2018 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, as well as resuming the role for the Broadway run.