Michael Patrick died Tuesday at Northern Ireland Hospice in Belfast. He was 35 years old.
The cause was motor neurone disease, a progressive and incurable neurological condition that destroys the nerve cells controlling voluntary muscle movement.
He had been diagnosed in February 2023. He had been in hospice for ten days before he died. He passed peacefully, surrounded by his family and friends.
His wife Naomi Sheehan announced his death on Instagram on Wednesday. She called him “a titan of a ginger-haired man.”
She wrote that he had lived “a life as full as any human can live. Joy, abundance of spirit, infectious laughter.” She closed her post with a line from the Irish writer Brendan Behan, “Eat. Drink. Love.”
Michael Patrick was an actor and playwright from Belfast. He appeared in television productions including Game of Thrones, the BBC drama Blue Lights, and the Syfy series Krypton.
He was known to wider international audiences through a Season 6 appearance in Game of Thrones, where he played a Wildling.
His most significant work was on the stages of Belfast and Dublin, and the full measure of who he was as an artist is found there rather than in a television credit.
Who Was Michael Patrick?
Michael Patrick, whose offstage name was Michael Campbell, grew up in Belfast. His father died of motor neurone disease when Michael was a young boy, a loss he would eventually process through his work.
He studied science at the University of Cambridge before training as an actor at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London.
He built a career rooted in theatre while accumulating television credits across some of the most prominent British and American productions of the 2010s and early 2020s.
He worked consistently in Northern Irish theatre, earning a reputation as one of the most gifted and energetic performers of his generation in the Belfast arts community.
His collaboration with writer Oisín Kearney became one of the defining creative partnerships in Northern Irish theatre.
Together they wrote My Left Nut, an autobiographical solo play about growing up without a father after his dad died of MND, navigating an alarming medical condition during adolescence with no one to turn to.
The play was darkly funny and deeply personal, and it established Patrick as a writer willing to look directly at the most painful things in his own life and make art from them.
He would return to that impulse again in ways he could not have anticipated when the play was written.
How Did The Diagnosis Happen?
In late 2022, Patrick was performing at the Dublin Fringe Festival in a production that required him to dance. He kept falling, kept tripping over his feet. He blamed his shoes.
He told the Brain and Life podcast in January 2026 that he kept saying to himself, “Why have they got me dancing in these big chunky shoes? It’s not fair.” The symptoms did not improve.
His wife Naomi’s aunt, aware of his family history with MND, urged him to see a doctor. By the time he did, he could no longer lift his right foot off the ground and could not point his toes toward the ceiling.
He was officially diagnosed with motor neurone disease in February 2023. He was 32 years old.
His father had died of the same disease. The condition that had taken his father from him when he was a boy had now found him.
What He Did After The Diagnosis
The year following his diagnosis might have been the most productive period of his career. He did not stop.
He used what was happening to him as material, as every artist he admired would have done.
In 2024, at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre, Patrick starred in and co-wrote with Oisín Kearney an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Richard III. He performed the role from a wheelchair.
It was the first time an actor with a disability had played Shakespeare’s Richard III on the island of Ireland.
.The production was not a sympathetic gesture toward a sick man. It was, by the account of everyone who saw it, a genuinely great piece of theatre.
The adaptation they had written changed the source material in one specific and resonant way.
In Shakespeare’s original, Richard is deformed from birth. In Patrick and Kearney’s version, Richard receives a terminal illness diagnosis at the opening of the play, something like MND that will get progressively worse.
The character who schemes and rages against the world is doing so against the particular backdrop of knowing he is dying and that his body is going to fail him.
That context had an entirely different weight when performed by someone for whom it was literally true.
Lyric Theatre executive producer Jimmy Fay said Patrick’s performance was “one of the greatest performances ever on the Lyric stage.” He added, at the news of Patrick’s death, “These islands have lost a great artist, and the sky is brighter tonight with his star.”
He said Patrick had “used the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune thrown at him and turned them into visceral and vibrant art.”
In January 2025, the production was recognised at The Stage Awards at the Royal Opera House in London, where Patrick received the Judges’ Award. He received a standing ovation from the room.
Later in 2025, at Dublin Theatre Festival, Patrick performed My Right Foot, a solo show he wrote about living with motor neurone disease. Seventy minutes long.
Described by critics as a masterclass in humour, honesty, and resilience. The Irish Times called it exactly that. He also won the Overcoming Adversity Award at the Spirit of Northern Ireland Awards in 2025.
He continued performing and writing after being diagnosed in a way that left the Irish theatre community not simply moved but artistically challenged.
The MAC theatre in Belfast said in its tribute that he had “lit up stages with his poignant storytelling where he laid bare his life experience, exploring themes of death, grief and his more recent motor neurone disease diagnosis with bravery, and a fierce comic side.”
The Drug Trial And The Decision He Made At The End
In September 2023, Patrick was accepted into a drug trial for a potential MND treatment. The early results were promising in a way that had not been expected.
He told the Brain and Life podcast in January 2026 that he had “seen the first reversal of symptoms” within weeks of beginning.
“I can now wiggle my right foot and toes for the first time in about two years,” he said. “It’s small. And my breathing’s still going unless I get a tracheotomy, and my arm’s still getting weaker, but the fact is there is some reversal there, which is really exciting.”
His neurologist told him in February 2026 that he likely had about one year left. He spent more than a week in hospital discussing whether to undergo a tracheostomy, a surgical incision to open an airway to assist his breathing.
His friends and family had already raised close to £100,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the specialist care a tracheostomy would require.
He decided not to go ahead with it. He announced his decision on Instagram. The reason was direct and unambiguous.
He had been told it would take six to twelve months before he could return home following the procedure, due to a lack of staffing resources in the Northern Irish health system.
Every politician, social worker, and senior hospital administrator who had been contacted on his behalf had tried.
No one had been able to solve the staffing problem. He did not want to spend the end of his life in a hospital ward.
“Thanks so much for all the donations to the GoFundMe, even though I didn’t go ahead with the tracheostomy,” he wrote. “It will still go towards providing me with specialist care as I enter the final stages of life. I’m still overwhelmed by all your generosity. Anyway, still lots to live for and lots planned.”
He died ten weeks later.
What Is Motor Neurone Disease?
Motor neurone disease is a group of neurological disorders that progressively destroy the motor neurons, the nerve cells that control voluntary muscle movement including breathing, speaking, swallowing, and walking.
As the disease advances, muscles waste and weaken until the person can no longer move, speak, or breathe independently.
There is no cure. Approximately 5,000 adults in the UK are living with MND at any given time, and roughly one in every 300 people will develop it over the course of their lifetime.
Life expectancy following diagnosis is typically two to five years, though the rate of progression varies considerably between individuals.
In its most common form it is known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, in the United States.
His Survivors And His Funeral
Michael Patrick is survived by his wife Naomi, his mother Pauline, his siblings Kate, Maurice, and Hannah, and his nephew Micheál.
A Requiem Mass will be celebrated on Monday April 13, 2026 at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Knockbracken Drive, Carryduff, County Down.
He was 35 years old. His father died of the same disease. He wrote a play about losing his father.
He then contracted his father’s disease, wrote a play about that too, performed it from a wheelchair to a standing ovation, won a national award, and spent the remaining time he had making things.
He told his wife to eat, drink, and love.
