Brendan Gleeson on Banshees, his 'thrilling' Oscar nomination and his new role in Joker
Brendan Gleeson is one of the nominees for The Banshees of Inisherin that have contributed to the Irish making up 25% of the acting nominations at the 2023 Academy Awards. (Picture: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)
Brendan Gleeson was 34 and already making the transition from schoolteacher to full-time actor when My Left Foot made Irish Oscars history. It was 1990, and a busy stint with theatre group the Passion Machine had prompted conversations with his wife Mary about fully pursuing an acting career.
Jim Sheridan’s powerful and funny film caused a huge stir in Irish movie circles, recalls Gleeson, with five nominations including for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. In the end, the remarkable Daniel Day-Lewis (Best Actor) as the real-life Dubliner whose disability did not deter him from his art, and Brenda Fricker (Best Supporting Actress) as his courageous mother Bridget, brought home the biggest prizes in cinema.
“There was this sweep of optimism and belief,” remembers Gleeson of that time. “I don't remember it being a trigger point - I’d been talking to Mary about it (full-time acting) and the practicalities of giving it a go had taken root.
“There was also a thing in school where I had a bunch of lads that I brought from first year to sixth year, and I really had empty nest syndrome after them. The year before I left, I was starting with a whole new bunch of classes of fellas who I didn't know and it was like doing the washing up. You’d say: ‘Jesus, I thought I did this yesterday!’” laughs Gleeson, who turns 68 later this month.
Nevertheless, My Left Foot’s Oscars success was a time of enormous pride, and one which he feels provoked a sense of optimism and a can-do attitude from our screen storytellers.
“The whole film industry was reinvigorated by it, that we could work on a world stage,” says Gleeson. “That it was an Irish story that doesn't have to be pandering to anything, and was made for us as much as anybody.
“That we have the quality, if we keep driving the standards, to actually play on the world stage - we can go to the World Cup, and we can kind of be up there. I know that lift when My Left Foot happened, and the various others that happened in between - that was a huge, huge thing.”
It’s not lost on Gleeson, who is currently in Los Angeles preparing for his role in a sequel to 2019 smash The Joker, that he’s now at the centre of another monumental time for Irish cinema.
Ireland’s feel-good Oscars year has had movie lovers here buzzing, with a record-breaking fourteen nominations - a remarkable achievement for a small country, albeit one that now has a mature and widely admired screen industry.
On top of nominations for Paul Mescal, the charming short An Irish Goodbye, and the wonderful Irish-language drama An Cailín Ciúin and others, The Banshees of Inisherin got an impressive nine nominations. As well as the coveted Best Picture nod, Martin McDonagh’s pitch-black drama scored four acting shortlists.
Including Mescal’s Best Actor nomination, Academy Awards nods for Banshees’ Gleeson, Colin Farrell, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon means a remarkable 25% of acting nominees at this year’s Oscars are Irish.
Gleeson is delighted that Banshees did so well in what was very much a collaborative effort as the movie shot on Achill and Inishmore islands in the summer of 2021.
“The people who are in the frame all came on the journey,” he says. “The whole thing was such a collaborative and all-shoulders-to-the-wheel project. It wasn't just one individual who got lucky or it wasn't just a general thing about the film. It was all of that plus all these other bonuses. It just felt absolutely brilliant. It was incredible, really and The Quiet Girl the same, and then An Irish Goodbye in the shorts. Who knows what'll happen? But for me, the nomination is just really thrilling.”
"That so many other Irish nominees will be there makes it all the more special. “There’s such a confluence of different forces. This is a phenomenal thing - and I mean that because it is a phenomenon. It's a confluence of luck and deservedness, and a whole other swathe of things.”
Gleeson learned the news of his and the many other Irish Oscars nominations in the early hours in LA, when he received a call from his publicist saying: "Get a tux!"
After celebrating the news with his wife, Mary Weldon, who has joined him in the US, he made his way to the set of Joker: Folie à Deux, in which he will star opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. “I got up and went to work. It was lovely - that’s the best way for it to happen, really,” says Gleeson.
He is excited at the prospect of shooting on the film over the coming weeks having been a big fan of its predecessor. “I'm working with Joaquin Phoenix, who I just am mad about. I think that first Joker movie was one of the best things I've ever seen. That performance stays with me, has done since I saw it. I thought it was amazing - it’s a big thrill be working on something like that.”
Speaking fondly of the memorable summer of 2021, where the making of The Banshees of Inisherin was supported by a passionate cast and crew and a strong sense of community from the islanders who took it to their hearts, the Dubliner also got to experience another great love of his.
A keen fan of traditional Irish music, Gleeson is an experienced fiddle player and got to compose his own tune which is central in the story of his character, Colm, who is determined to create music for posterity. It was born, he says, out of McDonagh’s desire to see his cast go to places he hadn’t seen them go before.
“When he decided what Colm's art form would be he knew that this was my thing so he kind of wanted to mine that a bit. I asked him could I make up the tune - playing it with the three fingers!” he laughs.
“It wouldn't come and I'd sent my fiddle off to be repaired. But when my fiddle came back, the tune came. It was easier to play because I had lived with it for so long. There was a kind of an integration with everything that was being done.”
Whatever the outcome at the Oscars, Gleeson feels a sense of excitement at being part of a memorable Academy Awards for Irish storytellers.
“It’s great if it happens but it's still great if it doesn't happen. That's just the way it is. You know, I'm pleased that everybody's glad at home and getting a kick out of and I hope it inspires somebody along the line to do stupendous work over the next 30 years, 40 years."
He mentions An Cailín Ciuín writer-director Colm Bairéad among a new generation of talent emerging in the Irish film industry. "It’s fantastic. It’s a phoenix. Let’s go again.”
- The Academy Awards take place on Sunday, March 12
Brendan Gleeson spent many years of his life teaching in his native Dublin, a career he adored and treasured greatly. But as his theatre and screen acting work began to take off, he started to ponder taking up acting full time. As a dad to four young boys, it wasn’t a straightforward decision - but his wife Mary and a couple of friends and peers encouraged him to go for it.
“All of this was up for discussion a little bit. A couple of people had said: ‘You should go full time’. Then I said it to Mary and she said: ‘Why don't you then? Why don’t you go for it?’”
Gleeson had long been acting on a part-time basis with the safety net of a teaching career. But following a busy summer of 1989, where lots of theatre work was coming in, he started to consider whether he should make the leap into what is a less secure career.
“I loved teaching. I’d always loved it - I just felt I was 34 and I did always feel I didn't want to turn around at 35 and regret choices that I'm making as I'm going through life.”
He feels that teaching is too important a career to not be passionate about. “You're trying to impart certain truths, you're trying to offload certain questions, and trying to tease the nature of the questions that are going to come into people's lives. Then you have to put on a bit of a performance to keep them interested - because there's no point in talking to a presence that has left the room.”
Gleeson shines as Michael Collins in this historical drama that screened on RTÉ. The drama centres on Collins’ efforts to secure a high-stakes treaty with the British government.
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Gleeson’s performance as the eccentric and street-savvy criminal Bunny Kelly is bold and hilarious. The Dublin comedy-drama centres on a job that turns out to be anything but straightforward.
The Irish actor plays notorious real-life criminal Martin Cahill in a tale that focuses on both the impacts of his crimes and the cat-and-mouse games he played with police.
The Dubliner gets to display his knack for comedy as a contrary sheriff in this fun US creature feature, about a gigantic crocodile who is wreaking havoc in a lakeside community in Maine.
Gleeson taps into his inner múinteoir to play the colourful Mad-Eye Moody in the juggernaut movie series. He would later go on to reprise the role.
Gleeson and Colin Farrell’s charismatic onscreen pairing first surfaces in this cult classic about two hitmen who hide out in the Belgian city following a botched killing. The actors - aided and abetted by a foul-mouthed Ralph Fiennes - make for marvellous company throughout.
Gleeson shows his ability to disappear into character as Winston Churchill examines his actions during WW2 and the impact the life-changing period had on his marriage.
Gleeson plays a brazen, mischievous west-of-Ireland guard who joins forces with a bemused FBI agent (an up-for-it Don Cheedle) to probe a trafficking ring in the big Irish cinema hit.
The Dubliner is having a blast as a tough but ultimately kind prison chef, Knuckles McGinty, who plans a jailbreak with the loveable Paddington in this joyful, note-perfect family comedy for the ages.
