Another drop of the heavy stuff (2024)

In deceptively domesticated and cheerful mood, actor Eileen Walsh tells TARA BRADYwhy,when it comes to work, nothing makes her happier than the next intense and miserable role

ON STAGE and on screen she's a fearsome, charismatic force majeure. Her Medea, wrote The Irish Times'sPeter Crawley, "conceals her bloodiest thoughts behind the apron of a domestic goddess". Today, however, as she bustles around her north London home, Eileen Walsh's apron harbours nothing more sinister than freshly turned-out warm bread. That's right, folks: Lady Macbeth likes to get her baking done before the little fella comes home from school.

"He's learning co*ckney songs at the minute," she says. "It's Knees Up, Mother Brownhere all day long."

She, junior and sculptor Stuart McCaffer, her husband, have lived in this place for two years. It’s handy, she says, for popping back to her native Cork.

“A couple of my friends nearby have kids the same age,” she adds. “So we are able to pool childminders. And it’s lovely to be able to see good plays.”

For all these attractions, though, there remains the minor difficulty of explaining to the neighbours what exactly it is she does for a living. “I was talking to one of the mums at school recently,” she says. “‘So what kind of stuff do you do?’ Oh, you know, mundane things, crazy people, inconsequential details, people who are almost invisible. All my stuff is, um, kind of depressing.”

In this spirit she starts work with the Cork theatre company Corcadorca next month. “It’s another one,” she says. “It’s a project we’re going to do for the Cork Midsummer Festival . It’s just a woman in an apartment on her own on the night she decides to end it all. It’s an absolutely beautiful piece. It’s really intense.”

She says it like a kid who has just been put in charge of the fire-truck siren. As an actor, Eileen Walsh has always favoured intensity. It’s the only umbrella concept that describes her spectacular, varied resumé of raging Shakespearean ballast (Lady Macbeth at the Abbey, Cressida at Oxford) and meticulous, melancholic dissection of everyday tragedies.

“I’d love to get the call,” she says, laughing. “‘Hi Eileen, we’ve chosen you for your body, we’re just going for your looks.’ It hasn’t happened yet.”

Back in the real world, it’s almost disappointing to discover that Walsh couldn’t be jollier or better adjusted.

“I don’t know what it is,” she says. “I love the heavy stuff. I love the immediacy of theatre and how it can change people. I love how full-on the schedule for filming is, and having six takes to get it perfect. I love the intimacy of dealing with dissolving relationships and death. There’s no more visceral way to affect an audience. It’s my passion and profession rolled into one. Walking over London Bridge and heading into rehearsal is a joy.”

She always suspected she had an artistic bent, but also feared she was “crap at it”. Aged 12 she started attending theatre workshops, mostly because her sister Catherine was already going.

“I’m not being egotistical or anything,” she says. “I’m terrible at lots of stuff, but I was always good at acting. I never thought I’d end up being an actress, I just knew it was comfortable for me.”

At Trinity College Dublin she fell in with Rough Magic theatre company, and was still a student when she was cast as Runt in Enda Walsh's landmark play, Disco Pigs. Work in film and television soon followed, including her unforgettable turn as Crispina in The Magdalene Sisters, director Peter Mullan's harrowing drama about Irish teenagers condemned to toil in Magdalene asylums.

“It was a very important story and Peter was very passionate about it,” she recalls. “But even being on the set we had no idea how powerful it would be. It was only as it came up to the release date, when we started to get some feedback, that we started to sense how good it was and how important the timing was.”

Unsurprisingly, Walsh's extraordinary talents have proved well suited to the new wave of Irish miserabilism currently blossoming at a cinema near you. Following on from the compelling kitchen-sink dramas of Ivan Kavanagh ( Our Wonderful Home, The Fading Light) and the award-winning screen adaptation of Eden, Carmel Winters's brutalising, lyrical new film Snapmay mark the ne plus ultraof an exhilarating new sub-genre.

“I was in it and I still couldn’t believe it when I sat down to watch it,” says Eileen. “It is beautiful and horrible and gut-wrenching and sad and everything in between.”

A discombobulating psychological thriller, Snappivots around a mysterious child kidnapping. While the hardened mother of the accused (Aisling O'Sullivan, previously seen in The War Zone) divulges her side of the story to a documentary crew, the film flashes back to an abduction involving her 15-year-old son, Stephen (Stephen Moran). The boy, we learn, had previously holed himself up at his grandfather's house with an infant snatched from the park.

Mick Lally plays the grandfather in his final screen performance, a turn that seems to rip up the rulebook and start over.

"It must have been a huge decision for him to play that role," says Walsh. "It's so incredibly brave what he did. I remember doing some work with Druid in Galway and the amount of people who approached him on the street to say something about Miley was unreal. It kind of haunted him really. Nobody gets paid enough for that. Especially when his theatre CV was so extraordinary. And you think you know him as an actor, and you watch Snapand you realise you have no idea."

Winters, the film's writer-director and the playwright behind B is for Baby, initially created the story as a training scenario for psychiatrists. The finished film retains a chilling authenticity.

“Carmel did an amazing job,” says Walsh. “The suspense alone is painful. Any kind of dialogue with a director makes life easier, and she had such incredible control. The fact that she wrote it and then got the chance to direct is incredible. It wasn’t an easy sell. I wasn’t even sure if audiences could get through it.”

She need not have worried. Since the film premiered to rave notices at the Tribeca Film Festival last month, Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand and Jon Bon Jovi have each requested private screenings. Tribeca, it would seem, is determined to play godmother to Eileen Walsh's career. She won the Best Actress prize there in 2008 for her moving portrayal of Breda, the abandoned housefrau heroine of Eden.

“I got the phone call from Ryan Tubridy, saying ‘you’re live on air and you’ve won’,” she says. “I didn’t know I was nominated, I hadn’t a clue. I’d actually been over there for a few days, and still never twigged.”

She insists she won't allow the gongs to go to her head. Besides, even if she wanted to be a diva, her characters simply won't allow it. "We went on honeymoon in New York years ago, and The Magdalene Sistershadn't been released that long," she recalls. "I remember walking across the Brooklyn Bridge thinking that I was looking fabulous with my new clothes and my new honeymoon haircut. And this woman walks up and says, 'oh my God, you're an actress', and she shouts to her friend, 'I told you that's the Magdalene girl'. There is no escape. I really have to start thinking about prosthetics."

The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival begins tonight with a gala screening of

Submarine

at the Savoy.

The Irish Times

will have coverage, recommendations and interviews until the festival ends on February 27th.