He is best known for his role as Jock O'Keeffe in the comedy film The Young Offenders (2016), for which he won an IFTA Award, and its subsequent RTÉ and BBC Three series.
[3] As a student in the Cork School of Music Walley was a member of their Youth Theatre group, performing in productions such as Anouilh's Antigone, as well as undertaking individual lessons under the tutelage of Trína Scott.
[9] In 2018, Walley was cast alongside Aidan Turner in a revival of Martin McDonagh's play The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which opened at the Noël Coward Theatre in June of that year.
A virtual newcomer, he is excruciatingly brilliant as the mullet-clad Davey, who meets each new indignity heaped upon him with an impressive mix of resignation and hysteria", Broadway World saying that, "you would never be able to guess this is his West End debut", and The New York Times stating, "Chris Walley ... effortlessly conveys the illogical logic and perverse mundanity of the dialogue".
[11][12][13] For this performance Walley was nominated for the Evening Standard Emerging Talent Award, and was selected as a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit, an initiative established by the British Academy of Film and Television Awards to foster the talents of up-and-coming members of the arts world by offering them mentorship for a year.