Meet the cast of Before We Die
Category: Press Pack ArticleCHARACTER BIOGRAPHIES
Hannah Laing (Lesley Sharp) is a Detective Inspector with the South Western Police’s Organised Crime Unit and is fiercely resisting a transfer to desk duties as retirement approaches. She has become a by-word amongst her colleagues for hard-core parenting, having engineered the arrest of her son, Christian, which led to him serving a 21-month prison sentence for possession with intent to supply. Divorced from Christian’s father and estranged from her son, Hannah now lives alone but she’s having an affair with a married fellow officer, Sean Hardacre.
Christian Radic (Patrick Gibson) is Hannah’s British-born son of a Croatian father, who is trying to put his life back together having gone off the rails following his parents’ divorce. He’s working as a dish-washer at the Vino Mondana restaurant, after being introduced to the family that owns it by Stefan Vargic, a small-time criminal whom he met in jail. Christian refuses to have contact with his mother, but he’s still close to her boyfriend, Sean.
Billy Murdoch (Vincent Regan) has been seconded to the OCU from the National Crime Agency as a specialist in Eastern European drug gangs. He isn’t a regular police officer but is employed by the security services. Divorced, with a sixteen-year-old who ‘hates my guts’, Billy is a lone operator, who uses his contacts and his background in military intelligence to circumnavigate the police’s labyrinthine bureaucracy and give his colleagues in the OCU ‘plausible deniability’.
Sean Hardacre (Bill Ward) is Hannah’s married boyfriend and a fellow Detective Inspector with the OCU, who is getting ready to leave his wife and the police force. A mentor and father figure to Christian both before, during and after his arrest and imprisonment. As he starts to investigate the Mimicas, he realises Christian is right about the family’s criminal connections.
Tina Carter (Rebecca Scroggs) has been recently promoted to Detective Chief Inspector and is now head of the OCU. She is Hannah and Sean’s boss, and she has her suspicions about their relationship. Tina is conflicted between her instinct to encourage unorthodoxy in a bid to get results and her desire to do things by the book and continue fast tracking her career.
Leonard Kane (Steve Toussaint) is the local Superintendent for South Western Police whose responsibilities include oversight of the OCU.
Davor Mimica (Toni Gojanovic) is the older child and acknowledged leader of the Mimica family, whose father was murdered by Serbian forces during the War in the Former Yugoslavia alongside many of his family’s relatives, friends, and neighbours. Davor has ambitions to take over the illegal cocaine trade in south west England and he is ruthless enough to deal viciously with anyone who threatens to get in his way, as well as clever enough to stay off the police’s radar. His only vulnerability is his sexuality, which he keeps secret even from those who know him best.
Dubravka Mimica (Kazia Pelka) is the matriarch of the Mimica family who brought what remained of her family to start a new life in the UK after the civil war and who scrimped and saved to open ‘the smallest pizza place in Bristol’. Now the owner of the Vino Mondana restaurant, Dubravka is a warm and welcoming host but she’s fiercely protective of her kin and will do ‘everything necessary to protect the family’.
Bianca Mimica (Issy Knopfler) is Dubravka’s younger child and Davor’s sister. She was born and bred in England and is less in thrall to her family’s Croatian heritage, and uninvolved – although not unaware – of its criminal activities. By night she works as a waitress in the family’s restaurant, but by day she’s a law student at a local University. Bianca has known her boyfriend, Stefan, since she was four and has been destined to be with him for as long as she can remember.
Stefan Vargic (Petar Cvirn) is Christian’s former cellmate and Bianca’s boyfriend, who demonstrates his devotion to his soon-to-be fiancée by getting an elaborate letter B tattooed on his chest. Stefan likes to play the gangster, but his bark is a lot worse than his bite and he’d much rather be drinking in the bar all afternoon or watching basketball than putting in the hard work necessary to help his adopted family expand its criminal empire.
Zvonomir Mimica (Ryszard Turbiasz) is Dubravka’s brother-in-law and Davor and Bianca’s uncle. Zvonomir is the brawn to Davor’s brains and takes care of the Mimica family’s dirty work with obvious relish.