Colm Meaney has this way with uptight men of a certain age. His characters, that is. With deadpan wit and droll gravitas in two recent performances, the prolific Irish actor, after more than two decades in cinema, is onto something very funny—and very human—about the male mid-life crisis through the lens of a fractured ego struggling to get his due. The struggles of Colm Meaney himself—doing what he loves while finding casting directors to let him do it—were the topics of the day when I caught up with him recently to talk movies, movie acting and movie casting. Lucky for us, he’s still the same quirky Irishman through and through after 22 busy years in a place called L.A.

Lee Shoquist, ReelMovieCritic: Let’s talk about The Boys and Girl from County Clare. This is a film that’s sort of about music, but not really about music much at all. So can you comment on the Irish musical traditions in the film but also on what the film is really about?

Colm Meaney: Yeah, it’s a period piece first of all. It’s set in the 70s, and you couldn’t set the movie today because Ireland has changed so much since then. To me, the film is about denial and disillusionment. People screw up their lives, but the saving grace is the new generation who hopefully won’t make the same mistakes and will get it right. It rang very true to me and it was a page-turner. I liked the characters.

Everybody describes it as a sweet and romantic film, and it is all of those things. But the thing that hit me is that it’s also quite hard-hitting. For people of my generation, we were the changing generation. The previous generation accepted Ireland as it was for a long, long time. They were obedient, Catholic, Irish nationalists. And I guess, in a sense, the student movement in the 60s, the civil rights movement, all of those things in Ireland radicalized my generation, and things began to change very drastically.

For this guy Jimmy, the same thing wouldn’t happen today. He’d either face up his responsibility and not marry the girl, but still acknowledge the kid, or they’d get on with it some way. There wouldn’t be the same shame for having the kid and having to pretend somehow that the father was dead or something, and all that shifty secretive stuff going on. So in that sense it’s a period piece.

LS: What’s interesting are the scenes later in the film where you actually meet your grown daughter played by Andrea Corr, who’s great in the film as well. Neither of you really talk much, and the movie doesn’t have any sort of hokey melodrama to that relationship. It’s just sort of like, ‘Well, here we are. What now?’

CM: That stuck me very strong as well about the writing. It doesn’t descend into melodrama or sentimentality. It would have been very easy to write a lovely reunion between father and daughter. But this guy is incapable! He just doesn’t know how to do it. He spends his whole life pursuing his own agenda, and he doesn’t know how to really include anyone else in that agenda.

LS: There’s something very funny about the way you play guys like this. If you look at Jerry in Intermission and Jimmy in this film, they’re guys of a certain age and certain place in life. But they have these certain pride, ego and identity issues. I don’t know that it’s necessarily so much in the script but it has a lot to do with the way that you’re playing it. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but do you understand what I’m getting at?

CM: Absolutely. I don’t know that it’s not in the script. I think with the Jerry character in Intermission it was there, because this guy was just kind of floundering around desperately grasping at things. For Jimmy, the events would have come and gone and nothing would have changed for him except for the fact that he suddenly realized that he had this kid and the reality of having left this woman 20 years earlier sort of slaps him in the face.

LS: But there’s something sly about the way Colm Meaney plays it. I don’t know exactly what it is.

CM: Well, they’re sly people! And so many of the issues in this film are things that… Practically everybody I know in Ireland has had events like this in their family—children with dubious parentage, guys who have mistresses all their lives. There was a classic a few years ago. An old school friend of mine—and I only found this out because my brother is a lawyer—this guy had two younger brothers and three much older sisters. Dad dies, and it turns out his two younger brothers are not his younger brothers—they’re actually his nephews. It turns out the sister had had these kids. And one of the kids called my brother up and said, you know, ‘Did you know that Michael’s not my brother? He’s my uncle!’ But every family- it’s endless. It was all because, I guess, the role of the church. Child abuse, sexual molestation—it was just hidden.

LS: Is being Irish in Hollywood a commodity for you? Is it a blessing or a curse?

CM: It can be a bit limiting, I guess. It’s interesting when you see guys like Colin (Farrell) come along, and they kind of immediately break out of that mold. In terms of the industry, nobody talks about Colin as ‘the Irish actor,’ you know?

LS: He is a real actor and I think very underrated in terms of his versatility.

CM: Absolutely. I think Intermission proved that.

LS: Well, to do Intermission and then A Home at the End of the World and the Alexander, which was a real stab at something great. It’s kind of amazing when you think about it. Anyway, back to you.

CM: In my case it’s different. I’ve lived here for 22 years and I’ve played a lot of American parts at different times, but I still get, ‘Oh, he’s Irish and…’ I could have helped the situation by consciously losing my own accent and becoming Americanized. I haven’t consciously tried to hold onto my accent, it’s just the way it’s panned out, you know? I just kind of put it down to a certain lack of imagination with a lot of directors. Very often they want ‘the guy’ to walk into the room. So if you come in and your hair is long, and you’re talking about playing a Marine or something, then it’s ‘Well, his hair is too long.’ You know, cut his hair!

LS: You’re talking about a larger problem, which is that studios—and sometimes directors—don’t trust their audience. Things have become so narrow now. Do know what I’m trying to say?

CM: I do know what you’re saying. The whole thing operates on fear. Everyone has sort of hedged their bets, and nobody says ‘no,’ but nobody says ‘yes’ either. Casting directors don’t want to bring you in because they don’t want to piss off a director or producer who will say to them afterwards, ‘What the f&*k did you bring him in here for? He’s not right!’ So they’re not prepared to take a risk or use their imagination. And equally, I think you’re absolutely right that a lot of directors don’t trust the audience. They don’t want to make a brave choice, which would be an interesting choice, because they’re afraid that audiences aren’t going to get it.

LS: What about acting really does it for you? What really excites you about it?

CM: There’s nothing else I want to do. I know most actors want to direct, but I think they’re very silly and wrong to want that. It’s the old joke about ‘Mother Teresa really wants to direct too.’ I have worked with great directors who don’t work enough. They should be working. No one expects Stephen Frears to start acting. I don’t see why I should direct. But as far as acting is concerned, it is all I’ve ever done and I feel like I do it well. Not very often, but every now and then you get a character and you kind of hit a stride, or hit a note, and it’s the most pleasurable thing. It’s almost as good as sex. It’s the most pleasurable thing in the world to know that you’re kind of unsung, and develop some rhythm.

LS: Were there scenes in The Boys and Girl from County Clare when you felt that running through those moments?

CM: It’s not so much scenes. In a film it’s about if you really do feel you find the guy, then it’s a pleasure. Some characters you play are a struggle. You’re fighting to discover things in every scene. This guy, I felt I found him. I could just play the scene, and the scene felt right.