Charlene McKenna

Charlene McKenna

Born: March 26, 1984
in Glaslough, County Monaghan, Ireland
Charlene Lee McKenna (Irish: Searlaoin Nic Chionaoith; born March 26, 1984) is an Irish actress.

She became a household name in Ireland after starring as Jennifer Jackson in the miniseries Pure Mule (2005). She appeared on Irish television in Single-Handed 2 (2008), Whistleblower (2008), and Raw (2008–2013).

For Raw, she won Best Actress (Television) at the Irish Film & Television Awards, and for Whistleblower, she won Outstanding Actress in a Mini-Series at the Monte Carlo Television Festival.

Movies for Charlene McKenna...

Title: Bring the Drama
Character: Self
Released: February 14, 2024
Type: TV
Every performance counts. Bill Bailey champions aspiring actors from all walks of life. Will their raw talent and mentoring from top names in TV drama help with their big break?
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A Greyhound of a Girl
Title: A Greyhound of a Girl
Character: Tansey (voice)
Released: November 23, 2023
Type: Movie
Mary O’Hara is a sharp and cheeky 12-year-old Dublin schoolgirl who is bravely facing the fact that her beloved Granny is dying. But Granny can’t let go of life, and when a mysterious young woman turns up in Mary’s street with a message for her Granny, Mary gets pulled into an unlikely adventure. The woman is the ghost of Granny’s own mother, who has come to help her daughter say good-bye to her loved ones and guide her safely out of this world. She needs the help of Mary and her mother, Scarlett, who embark on a road trip to the past. Four generations of women travel on a midnight car journey. One of them is dead, one of them is dying, one of them is driving, and one of them is just starting out.
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Title: Clean Sweep
Character: Shelly Mohan
Released: May 14, 2023
Type: TV
Shelly Mohan is a regular mum who juggles the lives and schedules of three children and a husband who is a local detective. It’s a chaotic and mostly thankless life, but one with which she is happy…until a dark secret emerges from her past.
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Title: Holding
Character: as Evelyn Ross
Released: March 14, 2022
Type: TV
Local police officer Sergeant PJ Collins is a gentle man who hides from people and fills his days with comfort food and half-hearted police work. He is one of life's outsiders, lovable, but lonely and a bit rubbish at his job. When the body of long-lost local legend Tommy Burke is discovered, PJ is called to solve a serious crime for the first time in his career. Unearthing long buried secrets, PJ finally connects with the village he has tried so hard to avoid.
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Title: Bloodlands
Character: DS Niamh McGovern
Released: February 21, 2021
Type: TV
Northern Irish police officer DCI Tom Brannick connects a suicide note with an infamous cold case with enormous personal significance.
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Title: Vienna Blood
Character: Leah Liebermann
Released: November 18, 2019
Type: TV
Max Liebermann, a student of Sigmund Freud, helps Detective Rheinhardt in the investigation of a series of disturbing murders around the grand cafes and opera houses of 1900s Vienna.
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Title: Death and Nightingales
Character: Mercy Boyle
Released: November 28, 2018
Type: TV
Fermanagh, Irish countryside, 1885. On her 23rd birthday, Beth, who lives on a remote farm with Billy Winters, her tyrannical stepfather, whom she can barely stand, prepares to flee from such a suffocating life with the help of the seductive Liam Ward, without being aware that her decision will unearth deeply buried secrets a long time ago.
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Title: Stan Lee's Lucky Man
Character: Clare Cartmell
Released: January 22, 2016
Type: TV
London cop and compulsive gambler Harry Clayton is on the verge of losing everything. On the night when his huge debts are to be called in, he meets the enigmatic Eve, who gives him a mysterious bracelet said to endow the wearer with immense luck. Harry's fortunes suddenly begin to shift, but he also soon finds himself sucked into a sinister crime wave sweeping through the city.
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Boogaloo and Graham
Title: Boogaloo and Graham
Character: Mutter
Released: August 1, 2014
Type: Movie
In 1970's Belfast two young boys discover the facts of life aided by the help of their pet chickens.
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Ghosts
Title: Ghosts
Character: Regina Engstrand
Released: June 26, 2014
Type: Movie
Lesley Manville gives a career best performance in Richard Eyre's award-winning revival of Ibsen's poignant tragedy. Helene Alving (Lesley Manville) leads an outwardly contented life. It is the eve of the 10th anniversary of her husband's death, and she is about to open an orphanage as a memorial to him. To mark this occasion, her bohemian painter son Oswald (Jack Lowden) has returned from Paris. Helene plans to take the opportunity to reveal the truth to Oswald about his father. But the ghosts of the past erupt during an eventful evening, bringing the facade of civilised family life crashing down. Richard Eyre's production of Henrik Ibsen's coruscating masterpiece exploring the malign consequences of buried secrets and lies was universally acclaimed by the critics. It was also nominated for five Olivier Awards. This HD recording was captured at Trafalgar Studios during the play's strictly limited West End season.
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Title: Peaky Blinders
Character: Laura McKee
Released: September 12, 2013
Type: TV
A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England and centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby, who means to move up in the world.
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Title: Peaky Blinders
Character: Captain Swing
Released: September 12, 2013
Type: TV
A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England and centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby, who means to move up in the world.
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Title: Ripper Street
Character: Rose Erskine
Released: December 30, 2012
Type: TV
A drama set in the East End of London in 1889, during the aftermath of the "Ripper" murders. The action centres around the notorious H Division – the police precinct from hell – which is charged with keeping order in the chaotic streets of Whitechapel. Ripper Street explores the lives of characters trying to recover from the Ripper's legacy, from crimes that have not only irretrievably altered their lives, but the very fabric of their city. At the drama's heart our detectives try to bring a little light into the dark world they inhabit.
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Jump
Title: Jump
Character: Marie
Released: June 8, 2012
Type: Movie
The lives of four twenty-somethings collide one fateful New Year's Eve in this twisty, blackly comic crime thriller set amidst the ancient walls of Derry, Northern Ireland, in a night of fast talk, accidents and intrigue. Johnny, a small-time crook, and Marie, a dissatisfied shop assistant, are both looking for a fresh start. Greta is on the verge of taking her own life and Pearse has a bounty on his head for asking difficult questions about his missing brother Eddie Kelly. As the clock ticks down to midnight and the night's events expertly fall into place, Jump weaves an existential portrait of the characters' lives as their hopes, fears and secrets are revealed
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Title: Misfits
Character: Shannon
Released: November 12, 2009
Type: TV
When five young outsiders on Community Service get caught in a strange storm, they discover that they have developed superpowers.
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Title: Merlin
Character: Lamia
Released: September 20, 2008
Type: TV
The unlikely friendship between Merlin, a young man gifted with extraordinary magical powers, and Prince Arthur, heir to the crown of Camelot.
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Title: Raw
Character: Jojo Harte
Released: September 8, 2008
Type: TV
The lives and loves of the young staff who work in a successful Dublin restaurant and the intense friendships and bitter rivalries that blossom in the heat of the kitchen.
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Title: Whistleblower
Character: Karen
Released: August 31, 2008
Type: TV
Whistleblower is a two-part IFTA-winning fact-based RTÉ drama which focuses on the Michael Neary scandal that erupted in the 1990s. Neary is a retired Irish consultant obstetrician/gynaecologist who gained notoriety when it was discovered that he had performed what was considered an inordinate number of caesarian hysterectomies during his time at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, County Louth. A subsequent inquiry found that Neary had carried out 188 peripartum over a period of 25 years, some on very young women of low parity. The average consultant obstetrician carries out 5 or 6 of these operations in their entire career. The airing of the show prompted the support group Patient Focus to renew its call on the Irish Government for every woman affected by Neary's actions to be included in the Lourdes hospital redress scheme. Whistleblower highlights the obstacles encountered by a midwife as she blows the whistle on Michael Neary's irregular obstetric practices. It was broadcast on RTÉ One on Sunday 31 August and Monday 1 September 2008 at 21.30. The two-part drama was written by Rob Heyland and directed by Dermot Boyd. It was produced by Siobhán Bourke and Peter Norris and researched by Sheila Ahern.
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Dorothy Mills
Title: Dorothy Mills
Character: Mary McMahon
Released: August 6, 2008
Type: Movie
When a gloomy, God-fearing island community is rocked by the assault of an infant, a psychiatrist is called in to examine Dorothy Mills, the teenager accused of the crime. Despite the villagers' hostility to her inquiry, she soon comes to suspect that Dorothy suffers from multiple personality disorder...
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The Old Curiosity Shop
Title: The Old Curiosity Shop
Character: The Marchioness
Released: December 26, 2007
Type: Movie
A kindly shop owner whose overwhelming gambling debts allow a greedy landlord to seize his shop of dusty treasures. Evicted and with no way to pay his debts, he and his granddaughter flee.
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Kitchen
Title: Kitchen
Character: Kirsty Dunne
Released: July 8, 2007
Type: Movie
Tensions rise in a Glasgow kitchen as the cooks deal with the pressures of the job. When an ex-criminal gets a job at the best kitchen in Glasgow, he has to fight to prove himself in the harsh culinary world.
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Title: Skins
Character: Maddie
Released: January 25, 2007
Type: TV
Irreverent comedy drama which follows the messy lives, loves, delirious highs and inevitable lows of a group of raucous teenage friends in Bristol.
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Small Engine Repair
Title: Small Engine Repair
Character: Melanie
Released: September 7, 2006
Type: Movie
Doug, an aspiring country singer, has spent his life as a loser in a non-descript small town with nobody believing in his heartbreaking voice and talent as a musician. His wife has left him and only his best friend believes in him. But he has one last chance to make it.
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Middletown
Title: Middletown
Released: April 28, 2006
Type: Movie
An overzealous priest returns to his home town and ends up battling against his brother for the heart of the locals.
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Breakfast on Pluto
Title: Breakfast on Pluto
Character: Caroline Braden
Released: November 16, 2005
Type: Movie
In the 1970s, a young transgender woman called “Kitten” leaves her small Irish town for London in search of love, acceptance, and her long-lost mother.
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Title: Pure Mule
Character: Jennifer Jackson
Released: September 6, 2005
Type: TV
Multiple award winning drama series written by Eugene O'Brien, produced by David Collins, Ed Guiney and Peter Norris, and directed by Declan Recks and Charlie McCarthy. Pure Mule is set in modern rural Ireland, in a midlands market town. Each of the six episodes of the original series (which first aired on RTE in 2005) focuses in on one particular character from Friday evening to Monday morning.