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Shedding the Shamrock
Actor Colm Meaney talks to Daisy Carrington.
Perhaps it’s a ruddiness that is often mistaken for warmth. Maybe it’s a glimmer confused for sympathy in Colm Meaney’s eyes. Whatever it is, the industry trusts Colm’s seeming niceness, and doesn’t trust the Golden Globe-nominated actor’s ability to act.
“A couple of years ago,” Colm explains, “a casting director in England said to me, ‘Colm, some people think you’re just too nice to play certain roles.” If his agreeable nature doesn’t slate him towards certain roles, his standard Celtic mug is bound to.
“There’s a bit of pigeonholing going on about Irish actors,” Colm explains. “Most producers have very little imagination. Whatever walks in the room. People don’t get that actors transform themselves, and even if they do get it slightly, they don’t trust it somehow.”
Colm’s roles have ranged somewhat. He has played émigré thugs, stern fathers, the transport specialist on the Starship Enterprise, and a cross-dressing father of a struggling actor in Chapter Zero. One common thread in his characters is their reliance on his standard Irish looks.
“I suppose like most actors, we believe we’re much more versatile than we really are. I think I can play anything short of an Asian midget.”
While he has yet to have been assigned the Asian midget role, the industry is recognizing Colm’s talent, and has started to broaden the range of its offers. This year, he has several movies coming out, including John Irvin’s Boys and Girl from County Clare and Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake. Of the character Jimmy in Boys and Girls, Colm states, “I’ve played that guy before, that blustery emotional — certainly not the reflective thoughtful — kind of a guy.”
For Colm, Boys and Girl is more of a tribute to the films that inspired him in his youth. Colm remembers his young adulthood as a time of innovation in the British film industry. As a teenager, he was exposed to the films of director Lindsay Anderson, and found himself mesmerized. “[Boys and Girl from County Clare] is a sweet story, and it has this nostalgia. It’s set in the 70s, and it feels like a movie set in that period.”
While Colm enjoyed the setting of the film, he also appreciates the opportunity to play things less familiar to him.
“I’ve done loud characters, I’ve done bad guys, but you know, really kind of one-dimensional sort of bad guys,” he says. In the soon to be released Layer Cake, starring Daniel Craig, Colm plays Gene, a henchman caught up in the underbelly of London’s drug scene. The film, as the title suggests, celebrates its many, well, layers. Character development was clearly a key focus of writer J.J. Connolly’s efforts.
“The script was fascinating,” Meaney maintains, “you don’t just have flashbacks, you have these flashback within flashbacks. It was a fascinating read, and then the character, I thought, was something I’d really never done before.”
Later this year, Colm will be rewarded with an even greater departure when he plays across Laurence Fishburne as an Englishman in Five Fingers.
“I mean, it’s not huge or earth-shattering or anything like that,” Colm says, “but the character has a lot of emotional range. It’s a tough role and it was a very interesting exercise for me.”
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