Tom Cullen is back in focus through The Party on ITV, where he plays Ben Fitzmaurice, a sexually ambiguous Tory MP with money, ambition and a taste for flirtation. The profile lands as interest rises around his actress partner, his very famous ex and the gap between what viewers see on screen and what the piece leaves unnamed.
Born on July 17, 1985, in Aberystwyth, Wales, Cullen is 41 years old and has built a CV that stretches well beyond The Party. He played Viscount Anthony Gillingham in Downton Abbey in 2013, then moved through Black Mirror, World Without End, Knightfall, Harlan Coben's The Five, Gunpowder and Becoming Elizabeth.
Downton Abbey to The Gold
2013 was the year Cullen became a familiar television face through Downton Abbey, where Viscount Anthony Gillingham appeared in 12 episodes. That run gave him a foothold in mainstream period drama, and he has since used it to move across prestige television without being trapped in one type of role.
Two series of The Gold later put him into a different register entirely, as John Palmer in a drama built around the Brink’s-Mat robbery of 1983 and the subsequent decade. Hugh Bonneville and Jack Lowden shared that project with him, while The Gold also drew on a real-world criminal story that still carries commercial and cultural weight.
Ben Fitzmaurice and Martin
Ben Fitzmaurice in The Party gives Cullen a sharper kind of visibility because the role sits inside an ITV thriller based on Elizabeth Day's book of the same name. Ben is written as handsome, wealthy, ambitious and flirtatious, and Cullen's own description of Martin in the story — that he would do "Anything." for him — gives the relationship in the drama a blunt, useful edge.
That setup matters because the profile is doing two things at once: selling the role and selling the off-screen figure attached to it. The piece points to an actress partner and a very famous ex, but it withholds the partner's name, leaving the most searchable part of the story just out of reach.
Joseph, Ruth and the missing name
Cullen's family details are straightforward enough. He has one brother, Joseph, and one sister, Ruth, and the article uses that kind of domestic grounding to keep him from becoming just another credits list. It also reinforces the contrast at the heart of the profile: a man with a public screen life and a private life that is being described in pieces.
The missing name is the whole game here. Readers get the outline — actress partner, famous ex, two children — but not the partner's identity, so the profile works more like a tease than a full reveal. For anyone coming to The Party through ITV, the practical takeaway is simple: Cullen is the actor to watch in the role, but the personal detail the headline hints at still sits just beyond the body copy.
