Look who’s starring in Normal People
Move over Derry Girls, Ciaran Hinds’ daughter Aoife lands new role in raunchy TV show
THE daughter of Irish actor Ciaran Hinds is set to join the cast of RTÉ’s sizzling new drama Normal People.
Aspiring actress Aoife – the only daughter of Ciaran and his partner Hélène Patarot – stars as Helen, the university girlfriend of lead character Connell Waldron played by 24-year-old Paul Mescal, from Kildare.
Normal People is one of the most highly-anticipated TV shows of the year and centres around the troubled love story of Waldron and Marianne Sheridan (Daisy EdgarJones), as they grow up in Sligo and leave for university.
The romantic drama by Lenny Abrahamson is based on a bestselling novel of the same name by Sally Rooney, and has thrilled audiences with its no-holds-barred depiction of the minutiae of teen relationships.
However, irate callers also got in touch with RTÉ Radio One’s Liveline this week to complain about the TV show’s candid sex scenes.
Viewers can expect to see Aoife take on her new role later in the series. The actress previously appeared in Derry Girls where she played Mae Chung, an unstable schoolgirl, in the Channel 4 show.
Her actor father – who hails from Belfast – has starred in many TV and film hits too including Game Of Thrones and Harry Potter.
And while Aoife divides her time between London and Paris, she admits to spending much time in Dublin. In a previous interview she said: ‘When I was younger, I would visit my family a lot in Belfast and in Cushendall and I would also go to Dublin quite a bit because I had family friends there.’
She also had hopes of studying drama at Trinity College.
‘I wanted to go to drama school in Ireland, that was my dream,’ she said. ‘My first choice was the Lir [Trinity’s prestigious acting school] in Dublin but they didn’t want me.
‘I would have loved to go and live in Ireland for three years because I feel it’s so embedded in me but I’ve never lived there and I have this frustration of saying I’ve never lived there.’ Her father initially tried to sway her from the unstable life as an actress – but when he realised his daughter had real acting ambitions, Hinds showed her his full support.
‘My dad did try and keep me away from it for quite a while because he knows how hard it is especially today,’ she said.
‘But when he realised I really wanted to do it, he was fully supportive.’
‘Dad did try and keep me away from it’