is an Irish film and theatre director. He is best known for the films Brooklyn (2015) and his debut feature, Intermission (2003), for which he won an Irish Film and Television Award for Best Director. He is a brother of the designer Bob Crowley.
Crowley earned a BA in English and Philosophy (1990) and an MA in Philosophy from University College Cork.
Crowley became involved in theatre as a student, seeing it as a stepping stone to directing film. He began directing plays in Dublin in the early 1990s, reached London's West End by 1996 and eventually become an associate director at the Donmar Warehouse. In 2000, he directed Come and Go as part of the Beckett on Film series and made his feature debut Intermission (2003), a comedy drama set in Dublin, starring Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy and Kelly Macdonald, based on a screenplay by playwright Mark O'Rowe.
In May 2005, Crowley, along with Danny Boyle, launched the UK Film Council Development Fund's "25 Words or Less: Director’s Cut" scheme to develop a feature film project, stating that he wanted particularly to "create a contemporary 'rebirth' or transformation story about a man or woman who begins as someone that spreads coldness."
In 2007, Crowley reteamed with O'Rowe for the thought-provoking BAFTA-winning drama Boy A, about a young man's return to civilian life after imprisonment for a brutal childhood killing, which was made for British television but was released theatrically in the US the following year. It won him the Best Director (Fiction) award at the 2008 British Academy Television Craft Awards.
Additionally, Crowley was Tony nominated for the hugely successful London and Broadway runs of Martin McDonagh's play The Pillowman in 2003 and 2005. He directed Neve Campbell and Cillian Murphy in the West End production of Love Song in 2006-7, and in 2007 filmed a television version of Harold Pinter's Celebration starring Michael Gambon, Stephen Rea and Colin Firth. In 2009 he directed the film Is Anybody There?, set in 1980s seaside Britain, written by Peter Harness and starring Michael Caine as a grumpy ex-magician. In 2010, Crowley teamed once again with McDonagh for A Behanding in Spokane on Broadway.
In July 2016, it was announced that Crowley will direct the screen adaptation of Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Goldfinch for Warner Bros. and RatPac Entertainment, starring Ansel Elgort, Oakes Fegley, Aneurin Barnard and Finn Wolfhard.
In 2017 it was announced that he would be directing a film adaption of Bernard MacLaverty's Midwinter Break.
