Oscar hopeful Mark is the real McCoys!
Headspace star says becoming the second Irish actor with Down syndrome to win an Academy Award might just help him to realise his Fair City dream
ACTOR Mark Smith is hoping to become the second Irishman with Down syndrome to get his hands on an Oscar – and then do the TV chat show circuit.
Smith is the star of Aisling Byrne’s short film Headspace, which won the Oscar-qualifying prize at the Cork International Film Festival, and will be considered by the Academy in Hollywood in the coming weeks.
A nomination would mean a second year in a row for an Irish short film at the Oscars featuring a lead actor with Down’s, after James Martin won with An Irish Goodbye earlier this year.
‘I’m kind of following in [Martin’s] footsteps,’ Smith told the Irish Mail on Sunday. He’s inspiring. He’s just a downto-earth, lovely guy from [affects Belfast accent] Northern Ireland.’
Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday ahead of the UN’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities today, the 43year-old actor said it would be ‘absolutely brilliant for me to be a second guy going over from Ireland to represent people who have Down syndrome like me’.
And he already has his sights set on ‘a few good celebrities’ he ‘might be sitting beside, fingers crossed’.
Last year’s Best Actor nominee Colin Farrell is mentioned, as is Harry Potter
‘Oscar consideration is a long shot but an honour’
star Daniel Radcliffe.
‘Me and him have the same birthday,’ said the ‘huge Harry Potter fan’.
‘And I’d love to meet JK Rowling. And Julie Walters because she’s so funny.’
Headspace writer/director Aisling Byrne told the MoS that Oscar consideration for Headspace is ‘a long shot’ but ‘a huge honour’.
‘Yeah, it’s just a great honour,’ agreed Smith.
‘It would mean having more interviews, probably on TV. Doing [The Late Late Show with] Patrick Kielty. That’s definitely on the cards.
‘And then hopefully we’ll do This Morning in the UK. That’d be fun.
Then do Lorraine [presented by Lorraine Kelly].’
Another of his ‘dreams’ is to appear on Fair City – ‘I’m hoping to do the Christmas special because I’m still a big fan,’ he said.
Another of his dreams is to be interviewed by Walking In The Air singer and radio presenter Aled Jones.
The actor and former Tesco worker from Celbridge, Co. Kildare, has already met one of the most famous people in the world in Justin Bieber.
Smith managed to share a few words and a hug with the singer when he was playing here in 2017, with photographs of the warm exchange going viral.
He describes it as a full-circle moment.
‘I actually did a dance [for LipSync Battle Ireland 2017, which he won] by a guy called Michael Jackson – the famous moonwalk. He had given that to Justin Bieber, who did the moonwalk in his video for [his 2010 hit] Baby. Then in 2017 I did it and met Justin Bieber.’
And another star he has met is globally famous singer Hozier, who was ‘so nice’ when they met backstage at the Tommy Tiernan Show, though Smith admits he thought he was an actor and asked him what films he’d been in.
That interview on Tiernan’s chat show, alongside his friend and longtime collaborator Byrne, further raised the profile of Smith, who was already a minor celebrity around Celbridge.
It came around the same time he was touring the country with Making A Mark, an almost-oneman-play (facilitated on stage by Byrne) in which he reflects on his storied life. It includes highs such as winning a silver medal for swimming in the 1999 Special Olympics in North Carolina and winning LipSync Battles Ireland 2017, to lows like the death of his father and his struggles with maintaining a healthy weight. ‘It was kind of raw to do it every single night,’ Smith reflects now.
‘But the reason I wanted to do it was it was a very hard struggle losing my dad, the bereavement I had, the weight issue.
‘I thought people in the audience didn’t know that about me. So now they know,’ he added.
‘The emotional impact of the show was predominantly on the audience,’ Byrne says.
‘People were sobbing. Mark used to joke about how he wants to go out and collect people’s tears in a lunchbox at the end of the show as a measure of its success.’