Mary McEvoy on life, love, prayer and why she will never diet again
Rumour would have us believe she’s an aged lesbian with a string of lovers but, no, she’s your average Buddhist sheep farmer/actress who struggles with weight and depression
She’s instantly recognisable as one of the most beloved characters in Glenroe. But backstage at the Gaiety, during rehearsals for a production of John B Keane’s play Moll that opens this week, you would be hard-pressed to immediately identify Mary McEvoy who is dressed up as an old spinster in an unfashionable dress with obligatory wig and hat.
Whipping off the disguise as she takes a break, Mary looks decades younger and nowhere near the age of the big 6-0 she is credited with on Wikipedia.
‘No, I’m not! No, that’s a vicious rumour put out there by people!’ she laughs, refusing to divulge her age.
Another rumour Mary finds hilarious is her supposed lesbianism, and reputed string of affairs with certain celebrities who shall remain nameless for legal reasons.
‘Oh, yeah! I had so many lovers – and all my lovers, none of them are gay either!’ she says with her tongue firmly in her cheek. ‘I don’t know where it came from, but I think it was that thing of, you know, the way they say, “An Irish homosexual is a man who prefers women to drink!” And I think an Irish lesbian is a woman with a career and no kids!
‘It doesn’t matter any way to me – they could say a lot worse about me than I was gay. But I like to think if I was gay, I’d be out and proud and not be hiding it. An honourable tribe to belong to.’
Mary ticks the aforementioned boxes as a woman with a career and no children, but she has been with her partner Garvan Gallagher – an accomplished musician who has played with the likes of Mary Black and written music for Bosco – for the past 27 years.
‘We blamed Garvan’s ponytail [for the lesbian rumours] for a while because he used to have a long ponytail and from the back you might have thought that we were two women!’ she says laughing.
‘My cousin heard this woman talking authoritatively about how she had seen me and my lover at the time – who was another wellknown woman who wasn’t gay either – absolutely swearing (that I was gay) and I’d never even met this woman.
‘And my cousin was smiling to herself, laughing, because she’d been out for drinks with myself and Garvan the night before.’
The couple spend their free time on the farm in Westmeath where Mary grew up. In a case of life imitating art, Mary – who played farmer’s wife Biddy in Glenroe – looks after 60 sheep on her farm.
‘I have help, but I’m perfectly capable of delivering lambs and managing my sheep.’
But unlike Biddy, Mary, a practising Buddhist, says she finds it hard to raise sheep just so they can be slaughtered. ‘I’m getting out of it because I like sheep too much! I just think they get a hard time! I don’t want to be part of the process any more.
‘They’re nervous creatures. I’d rather mind them and look after them than breed for slaughter, you know? I’m just getting a bit more thoughtful in my later years.’
‘I blame my husband’s long ponytail Fromthe back we may look like two women’
Mary – who says she can spend up to 14 hours a day minding her sheep when she’s not working on the stage – became a Buddhist 28 years ago after reading an article about it in the Mail on Sunday.
‘I was always searching, even when I was a child. The spiritual side of life was always my primary interest. When I started to practise Buddhism, I felt I’d come home really. I’ve nothing against Catholicism, but I couldn’t not believe in reincarnation – it just seemed to me to be so logical.’
She takes her religion very seriously. ‘I pray twice a day on my own, morning and evening. I always equate it to the way a ballet dancer does exercises every day to be able to dance.
‘Well, I do my prayers every day to be able to live my life as best I can to Buddhist principles. You aim high but you fail, but you keep on aiming, so that’s the most important thing.’
Mary – who never told her ‘ old-fashioned’ father about all this for fear of upsetting him – remembers how her mother was initially disappointed with the news that her daughter had become a Buddhist.
‘My mother was obviously upset because she was a very devout Catholic, but she couldn’t deny that there was a change in me. She said, “You have changed a bit now since you’ve started doing this.”
‘She was great actually for a woman who was as devout as she was and as dedicated as she was to her faith, she did accept it.’
Her parents were also shocked and even more disappointed when she started ‘living in sin’ with Garvan – within a month of them starting dating – because he was coming out of a failed marriage.
‘But in those days, for my parents’ generation, that would’ve been a huge thing. It didn’t make them happy, no. It didn’t make my mother happy at all. But she liked him because she couldn’t help liking him.
‘But that was the Ireland of those days – that was the way we were. It would’ve been frowned upon. It would be very racy. And because you couldn’t get married you were always living in sin. So, living in sin was the worst thing.
‘When you tell a younger person how it was for women in particular, and also for men, when I was growing up they don’t believe it. They just find it very hard to believe the strictures we grew up with, you know? It was very difficult to be your own person.’
It was growing upon the family farmas a self-described tomboy that helped Mary get her big break in acting. After moving to Dublin to take up a civil service job, she studied acting and got a few roles at the Gate Theatre. Her big break came in 1983 when she was cast as Biddy opposite Mick Lally.
‘I was third in line; there was two other actors who were asked and they
‘Every theatre I go into I have a memory of Mickin some form or other. We’ve been in all of them together’
turned it down, so I got it. But part of the reason why they went back to me, as opposed to somebody else, was the fact that they didn’t have to teach me how to drive a tractor! They could put me up on a tractor and I could drive it.’
After 16 years on Glenroe, Mary decided she had enough and left – but the show ended up being axed the following year anyway.
Halfway through the interview, Mary points to a drawing of the late Mick Lally on the wall of the green room.
‘Every theatre I go into I have a memory of Mick in some form or other. We’ve been in all of them together at one stage or another with different plays.’
She was devastated when Mick died, aged 64, after contracting a chest infection while battling emphysema in 2010.
It was shocking because it was not only saying goodbye to a friend and a colleague and a person that was there for most of your working life – but saying goodbye to really the happiest days of your life because he was so symbolic of the whole thing. It was awful. He was ill but we didn’t think, “Ill as in going to die.” No, not at all.’
Despite her success during those halcyon days on Glenroe, Mary’s personal life was at an all-time low as she privately battled with depression. For the past 20 years she’s been taking anti-depressants on and off, which she credits with turning her life around.
‘It’s a battle every day – and I win it every day because I’m still here and I can work. I’ve always been able to work no matter how bad my version of it was. The only worry I ever have about speaking out about it is that somebody might read, “She’s got depression” and not read the rest of it. And then say, “Oh, we can’t work with her because she might go on a downer.” Whereas the work is very important because some people do work with it…’
As part of her battle with depression, Mary found herself struggling with an eating disorder.
‘It was a drug; that’s what I called it – my drug of choice. I would get drunk on food, not drink. Some people go to the bar – I’d go to the fridge. If drink is your drug of choice, you can give it up but you always have to eat and that’s the hardest thing. I must say it’s kind of gone really…’
Nevertheless, she admits she still has to be vigilant about not slipping back into her food addiction.
‘I was listening to Russell Brand the other day and he was talking about heroin. Once you’ve got the habit it’s never gone, it’s just in the day you do what you can.
‘I think it was Oprah Winfrey he was on and she asked, “When was the last time you thought of taking heroin?” And he said, “About 10 minutes before I met you.” And she said, “Why?” and he said, “Because I felt scared and I didn’t know how to do this and I was worried…”’
Mary shed a lot of weight when she took part in a dieting segment on TV3’s Midday, but she confesses to putting it all back on since.
‘I’m three stone heavier than I was before. Look it, any one watching the television could tell you, there’s no point in pretending otherwise. It’s on the way down very slowly again.’
She vows she will ‘never again’ go on a diet. She explains: ‘It’s stupid because you go, “Oh, I’ll go on a diet. I’ll lose two stone. Oh, I’ll stop dieting – I’ll put on three stone!” It’s ridiculous, it’s a crazy thing. I just try to eat well and not medicate with food.’
Instead Mary plans to lose some weight by getting back into exercising. She is as busy as she’s ever been. After Moll, she will take part in a ‘lot of festivals’. She is also working on a book about spirituality.
‘I have enough on my plate. I’m delighted with myself really.’
Mary, who is also planning to revisit The Matchmaker later this year, believes there is a lack of good roles for women and that is one of the reasons she is drawn to John B Keane’s plays. ‘He’s amazing writing for women. I think he has huge sympathy for women.’
As the interview winds down, I ask Mary if she has any regrets about not having children of her own?
‘I know it sounds very serious but I’m really concerned about climate change and I don’t think we’re taking it half-seriously enough. So, I’m glad I’m not leaving children after me to have to deal with the mess that’s been made.
‘And also I am quite immature!’ she says laughing. ‘I don’t think I’d have made the best mother in the world. I think the sheep have profited where a child might not have, you know?’