Domhnall gleeson
Star Wars baddie and Brooklyn goodie.
Laid back and humble, it’s easy to forget that Irish actor
Domhnall Gleeson is one of Hollywood’s hottest young actors. Whether he’s charming in period drama Brooklyn or brooding in blockbuster Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Total Film discovers he’s all about keeping it real.
Domhnall Gleeson is master of the understatement. Ensconced in a classy Soho hotel, the 32-year-old actor is plane-fresh, having just flown in from his hometown of Dublin, and casually pours Total Film a glass of sparkling water when Star Wars inevitably comes up. “I mean, I know everything about it and I think that it’s going to be very good,” he says casually when we ask what he, as one of the few people who’ve touched the script for Star Wars: The Force
Awakens, actually knows about the film. “The stuff I know is pretty cool... It’s pretty cool...”
It’s hard to imagine anybody else being quite so composed about J.J. Abrams’ intergalactic blockbuster, which isn’t only the first Star Wars film since 2005’s Revenge Of The Sith, but also the first in Disney’s ambitious ‘expanded universe’ set of Wars movies. Things have been “particularly hectic” for Gleeson over the past 12 months, though. His new film, poignant Nick Hornby-scripted drama Brooklyn, debuted to rave reviews at Sundance in January and bows at the London Film Festival this month. Meanwhile, Gleeson has jetted between British Columbia (shooting Leonardo Di-Caprio western The Revenant), Georgia (for Tom Cruise’s CIA thriller Mena), and various sound stages at London’s Pinewood Studios for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
From the outside, it looks like he hasn’t had much time to stop and enjoy the view. “Maybe it seems that way, but it doesn’t really feel that way,” he muses, reclining in a comfy chair in the hotel’s low-key library room. “The last year has been hectic, but I’ve been home and had time to travel and get around. I’ve certainly been very lucky with the work I’ve been able to do, so that’s been great.” Home is Dublin, where Gleeson grew up. His parents still live just “down the road, and my friends are around the corner” and, despite the ubiquitous lure of Hollywood that comes with having an impressive, expanding CV, Gleeson has no plans to relocate. “I don’t feel any kind of desire to get out of Dublin,” he says.
Sitting cross-legged in an armchair, heavily bearded (for his role in Mena) and wearing a blue T-shirt and black jeans over red Converse, he has the relaxed aura of an eternal student. It’s not difficult to see why he’s been described as “so good and so smart” by bigwigs like J.J. Abrams. Animated but not manic, he never sits still for long, looking you right in the eye when he speaks and more than slightly resembling his famous father, Brendan Gleeson, with whom he’s worked numerous times, most recently in black comedy Calvary. (“People always want to ask me about my dad,” he’s said. “Which I get because he’s a phenomenal actor, and that’s for the world, that’s out there.”)
There’s nothing faux-starry about Gleeson, and his modest everyman appeal is readily apparent in Brooklyn, John Crowley’s stirring adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s 2009 book of the same name. Set in 1950s Ireland, it follows young Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) as she escapes her hometown of Enniscorthy in favour of the bright lights of New York City. After falling for local man Tony (Emory Cohen), tragedy prompts her return to Enniscorthy, where she encounters the reserved and charming Jim (Gleeson). Tempted anew by
the comfort of familiar surroundings, Eilis is torn between staying in Ireland or returning to the life she’s created for herself in Brooklyn.
“It’s quite a grown-up take on what it is to be in love,” Gleeson says, sipping his water. “It appears to me that it’s possible she’s in love with two men simultaneously – or not in love with either of them, which might be more interesting!” It was Gleeson’s love for Crowley and Ronan that prompted him to sign on for the role. He adds: “It was quite a strange, difficult job to take on. My part is quite sealed off from the rest of the movie, it’s in the latter stages and it’s only 20 minutes. But Saoirse’s amazing in it, like really brilliant, and I think John did a great job. I’m very proud to be in the film; it’s one of the good ones. It feels honest, I think.”
Honesty is a quality Gleeson has brought to many of his characters, whether he’s perched opposite Michael Fassbender in a papier-mâché mask ( Frank) or falling for the charms of Alicia Vikander’s mesmerising AI ( Ex_Machina). “He thinks very deeply about his roles and there’s an intensity to him,” Crowley has said, and he’s not wrong. In just five years, Gleeson’s proven himself to be an incredibly diverse talent, finding his acting feet in 2010 with Coen brothers western True Grit, just a year before he got his first dose of franchise fever playing Bill Weasley in Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. Since then, he’s brought cleareyed intensity to everything from Dredd and
Anna Karenina to Richard Curtis comedy About Time.
“I just like stories that keep me turning pages,” he says, hinting at a restless appetite for creativity that’s seen him contributing sketches to Irish show
Your Bad Self, landing a Tony nomination for his role in The Lieutenant Of Inishmore, and even directing his dad in short film Noreen. He has the kind of dedication directors dream of (“Do whatever it takes,” he says of the dramatic weight loss he undertook for Angelina Jolie’s war flick Unbroken), which has undeniably aided his rapid rise through the Hollywood ranks. Each movie choice has been a bold step in a new direction, leading him all the way to the actor’s Holy Grail: Star Wars. Of all the new characters in Star Wars: The
Force Awakens, though, Gleeson’s has remained the most shrouded in mystery. While John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac (Gleeson’s other Ex_Machina co-star) have featured heavily in promo material, even the name of Gleeson’s character – General Hux – was only revealed in August 2015, alongside the first shot of him wearing black robes and a stony expression (left). Will Hux turn out to be a miserly henchman in the vein of Peter Cushing’s Tarkin? Or could he develop into a more sinister, Vader-like powerhouse in future Episodes?
Gleeson’s not saying, clearly wary of the spoiler hounds. He even errs on the side of caution when we mention that Abrams has described Hux as “merciless”. “Is that what he said?” he muses, before laughing, “Yeah, I mean you look at him and you realise he’s not a good guy! He’s got an English accent so he can’t be good. Uh… Yeah, it’s fun to do different things. I hadn’t played anybody like that before. Star
Wars is amazing, J.J. Abrams is amazing, but the thing to do was play something different. That’s what got me really excited.”
Attempting to get further details out of him is as difficult as levitating an X-wing out of a Dagobah swamp (“The only problem would be if I dozed off on a plane and started talking about it in my sleep,” he jokes), but Gleeson can’t help lighting up when he recalls first stepping onto the film’s impressive sets at Pinewood. “That does sort of take your breath way,” he grins. “That’s one of those ‘pinch me’ moments. I experienced it in a major way on Harry Potter and it’s a similar thing with
Star Wars, except you look down and you’re in the gear and you have stuff to say and you’re like, ‘Holy God.’ And yes, it’s very difficult to remain cool about stuff like that. There’s no two ways about it, it’s totally brilliant.”
He takes another sip of water, perhaps to prevent any more secrets spilling out, and instead reveals he went back and watched the original Star Wars trilogy before filming “to get a feel for where we were headed”. But the actor doesn’t feel any pressure to correct the mistakes committed by the less-loved prequels. “I had nothing to do with the original trilogy or with the prequels, so any credit for any of those films, or anything which isn’t of credit for any of those films, I can’t carry with me,” he acknowledges diplomatically. “All you can concentrate on is the one in front of you, and trying to make your small bit of it as good as possible. Anything else is unhelpful.”
Still, he’s aware that Star Wars could have a huge impact on his career. With its $200m budget and an entire expanded universe
“It’s very difficult to stay cool about stuff like Star Wars. It’s totally brilliant”
dependent on its success, it’s easily the biggest film on his CV – and in an age of vocal social media types, signing on wasn’t the easy decision you might expect. “When I took the Star Wars gig I was a little concerned, ‘Am I inviting something on myself?’” he admits. “But that’s boring and they’re my concerns. Anybody reading this would say, ‘Shut up, I don’t want to hear about your troubles,’ and they’d be right.”
Gleeson’s far more interested in tackling the challenges of his day job – and there were challenges aplenty on The Revenant, the gritty western starring Di Caprio as 19th century frontiersman Hugh Glass [ see page 93]. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu ( Birdman) took his cast off to the wilds of British Columbia for a gruelling location shoot in which he pledged to make them “feel pain”, but Gleeson’s memories of it are nothing but positive. “It was one of those where you hear about it and you’re like, ‘Whatever I can do to do this!’” he says. “And then we had a great group of guys out there. Alejandro wanted to push us, and that was the right way to go about making the film. I saw some of it recently and I was like, ‘Fucking right!’ They hardly make movies like that any more.”
You could argue they hardly make actors like Gleeson any more, either. He’s not on Twitter, you won’t find pictures of him in any of the gossip rags, and he’s that rare thesp who lives for the work. There are echoes of his genial Brooklyn character in the thoughtful way he answers questions (not to mention his loyalty to his hometown), whether stroking his “luxurious” beard while discussing what it’s like to be in a room with Tom Cruise (“he’s great, he’s got so much energy”), or swatting away any suggestion that he could end up as famous as DICAPRIO (“he’s the only person in the world as famous as him!”).
Frank and easy-going, Gleeson’s humility makes it easy to forget that his body of work is already enough to make his nearest competitors sweat – not to mention he’s about to appear in the biggest movie of the year. “It is funny being in on a secret,” he says of the enormous furore surrounding
Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “Like when I met Oscar Isaac when we were doing press for Ex_Machina, we were all, ‘Isn’t it hilarious that we know things that other people don’t?’ That’s kind of great.” Spoken like a true master of the understatement.