David Morrissey - Early Life

Early Life

David Morrissey was born on 21 June 1964 to Joe, a cobbler, and Joan, who worked for Littlewoods. He was their fourth child, following brothers Tony and Paul, and sister Karen. The family lived at 45 Seldon Street, in the Kensington district of Liverpool. For National Museums Liverpool's Eight Hundred Lives project, Morrissey wrote that the house had been in his family since around the turn of the 20th century. His grandmother had been married there and his mother born there. In 1971, the family moved to a larger, modern house on the new estates at Knotty Ash, and Seldon Street was later demolished.

As a child Morrissey was greatly interested in film, television, and Gene Kelly musicals. After seeing a broadcast of Kes (Ken Loach, 1969) on television, he decided to become an actor. At his primary school, St Margaret Mary's School, he was encouraged by a teacher named Miss Keller, who cast him as the Scarecrow in a school production adapted from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz when he was 11 years old. Keller left the school soon after, leaving Morrissey without encouragement. His secondary school, De La Salle School, had no drama classes and was the sort of place where Morrissey thought the fear of bullying dissuaded pupils from participating in lessons. On the advice of a cousin, Morrissey joined the Everyman Theatre's youth theatre. For the first couple of weeks, he was quite shy and did not join in the workshops. When he eventually participated, he appeared in the youth theatre's production of Fighting Chance, a play about the riots in Liverpool. He went to the theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

By the age of 14, Morrissey was one of two youth theatre members who sat on the board of the Everyman Theatre. Ian Hart, with whom he had been friends since the age of five, was one of his contemporaries, as were Mark and Stephen McGann and Cathy Tyson. Morrissey became friends with the McGann brothers, who introduced him to their brother Paul when Paul was on a break from studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). When Morrissey was 15 years old, his father developed a terminal blood disorder. He was ill for some time and eventually succumbed to a haemorrhage at the age of 54 at the family home.