CityLife

Advertorial:Brendan Gleeson cops a top role

On Guard Brendan plays an Irish policeman

Brendan Gleeson slowly surveys the tiny hotel room, leans in conspiratorially and breaks the hushed silence with a whisper: “This is a bit like being in a lift, isn’t it?”

It isn’t just his substantial frame that fills cinema screens and confined spaces; Gleeson possesses a presence which immediately commands the attention of those around him.

But despite an impressive CV alternating between blockbusters and indie hits – from Braveheart and Harry Potter to the black comedy In Bruges – the former secondary school teacher retains his down-to-earth demeanour, with a playful spark in his eye and his native Dublin accent still strong.

The 56-year-old is winning fresh plaudits with comedy-thriller The Guard, playing an unconventional Irish policeman who joins forces with a straight-laced FBI agent (played by Don Cheadle) to crack an international drug smuggling gang.

Is it good judgement, or just good fortune that’s helped Gleeson pick such plum roles?

“I’m dead lucky, sure, just look at me... to be blessed with these looks,” he deadpans.

“No – I do work at it. I don’t do rubbish. If I know it’s going to be rubbish at the beginning, I’m not doing it.

“But that’s not to say it won’t turn out to be rubbish in the end, because it’s really hard to make a film from start to finish and not lose it somewhere along the way. There are so many pitfalls.”

Gleeson isn’t the typical leading man and his new character Garda Gerry Boyle – summed up by director John Michael McDonagh as “an eccentric individual with a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes and a heightened sense of the absurd” – isn’t a regular hero either.

“He’s not, no, and that’s the reason I liked the role. I don’t think we’ve seen him before. I couldn’t wait to get at him.”

Gleeson, who still lives in Dublin, is no stranger to the wild coastline of Connemara, west Galway, where the film was shot. And it’s with a hint of wicked relish that he recounts how California-based Cheadle got used to the biting cold and heavy rain.

“Don came in and was staggered we were filming in this apocalyptic weather. It just kept coming, and the Atlantic was very annoyed,” he reveals.
“I think he was quite wide-eyed for a while, but he had a great time over there and we had a great time with him.”

Next up for Gleeson is his directorial debut At Swim-Two-Birds. Based on the 1939 novel by Irish author Flann O’Brien, it tells the story of a writer whose life begins to blur with those of the fictional characters he’s dreamed up.

Gleeson insists he won’t be giving up acting any time soon though.

“I really do love what I’m doing. I feel like it’s what I have to offer,” he says.
“I’ve directed plays and things before, but only when I’ve felt that I was very proprietorial about the material and wanted my own particular vision.

“With this particular book, I’ve loved it since I was 17 and when the rights came up, I took them not quite knowing what I was going to do with them.
It’s become an obsession for the last seven years.”

Gleeson will direct his actor son Domhnall in the film. The eldest of the star’s four sons, the 28-year-old is carving out his own successful career with parts in the Coen brothers’ hit True Grit and Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows parts 1 and 2, playing Bill Weasley.

“There are three of us in the business now; myself, Domhnall and Brian, who’s younger.

“We’ve worked out a way of not being anything other than constructive when we work together.

“It doesn’t even feel as if you’re going to be directing somebody or directed by somebody.”

It was Gleeson’s sons who persuaded him to make his own star turn in the Potter franchise – as professor Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody, who is killed by Voldemort in the first Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows film.

“It felt childlike,” he says with a smile. “The reason I instantly took it was that the car erupted [in cheers] when my boys heard. There was no question, you have to do this, so that’s why I got into it.

“I knew what it was before that, but the crossing of the generations was great.

“When I got on-set, the kids were being allowed to be kids and there was huge respect for the audiences and the people who loved them. Kids were being brought in to be shown around – there was a magic about it that was irreplaceable.”

With such a diverse repertoire, Gleeson struggles to name the film of which he’s most proud.

“They say comparisons are odious. They’re such different experiences...

“But every time Braveheart comes on TV and you happen to watch it by mistake, it’s actually difficult not to watch it straight through,” he admits.

“Or The General [where the actor played Dublin gangster Martin Cahill] was something that was very dear and very risky.

“And there was fantastic camaraderie working with the likes of director John Boorman. In Bruges was sort of magical too.

“Some of them stand out in that way, but to compare things like Harry Potter with them, it doesn’t make any sense.

“I’m just lucky to be at them all really.”