Roma Downey was born in Ireland on May 6, 1960. She has two sisters, named Ann Flood and Jacinta McLaughlin. She attended the Brighton Art College in England, and also studied acting at the London Drama Studio. When she graduated from the London Drama Studio, she was voted Most Promising Student of the Year. Roma Downey engaged in stage plays before she became a professional actress.
Roma Downey’s first theater production was an environmental piece called Tamara in 1987. In the same year, she also started work on television for a soap opera on ABC called One Life to Live. Roma Downey was a member of Dublin’s Abbey Players, and when they went to the United States to tour the production of The Playboy of the Western World, she started to receive attention for her acting. In 1991, she played Jackie Onassis for a television movie called A Woman Named Jackie. She continued to do television movies such as Devlin, Getting Up and Getting Home, both in 1992, and Hercules and the Amazon Women in 1994.