INTERVIEW: Eve Hewson is making quite a name for herself – despite being born with a famous one – and now she's set for the big time, writes
TARA BRADY
IT’S SPRING BREAK and if MTV has taught us anything it’s that American students will put on bikinis, rock on down to the beach and get rowdy. Not so for Killiney girl Eve Hewson. The NYU (New York University) student has, indeed, headed for the Pacific coast for her mid-term. But, in common with all good students, she’s cramming as she zigzags across LA for meetings and auditions.
“It’s a really tricky business,” she says, with a wisp of the transatlantic in her south Dublin brogue. “My school is very strict. If you miss more than two classes they dock your grades and they might fail you. So if you have to leave to do an audition it’s not very news for my grades.”
At 20, Hewson is in the final year of a theatre major with a minor in child psychology. She went straight to New York after completing her Leaving Cert at St Andrew’s College, Dublin.
She has seldom been homesick; her older sister Jordan (22) had already crossed the Atlantic to study at Columbia when Eve made the trip.
“She was there for a year when I got into NYU,” she explains. “And my best friend since I was in junior infants lives with me. And another best friend is at college here. So there is a really strong Irish set.”
And Facebook for everybody left behind? “Oh, I don’t have Facebook. Which is kind of hard because my friends are crap at emailing. They want me to get Facebook: I want them to check their emails.”
It’s tough being in demand when you’re trying to buckle down at school. But casting directors are apt to come a-calling when a young actor earns rave notices. Doubly so when the young actor is starring alongside Sean Penn and Frances McDormand in director Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be The Place, one of the most talked-about pictures of the year.
“I am working with Sean Penn,” Eve repeats carefully. “That is like saying ‘I am training for the Olympics’. He is a tip-top actor. Sean Penn and Frances McDormand are the greatest actors of our generation. I have only done one movie and suddenly I am doing all these scenes with them.”
Was it scary? “I was terrified. People keep saying: ‘She wasn’t star-struck by Sean Penn’. That’s an absolute lie. I was totally petrified to meet Sean. I love him as an actor. And I’d never met him until the screen test. “I was dressed up in my gear. And he was in his outfit. We just met as our characters. We were asked to turn and face one another. So we did and he said, ‘Hi’. And we looked at one another for a really long time. Absolutely scary.”
This Must Be the Place is virgin territory even for a veteran like Penn. A defiantly eccentric portrait of an ageing rocker turned Nazi-hunter; cult director Sorrentino’s film sees Penn channelling The Cure’s Robert Smith. Hewson plays his devoted Goth fan with a tragic past.
“Some of the first scenes we did with Sean in character. I suddenly realised: this is not just working with Sean Penn, this is working with Sean Penn doing something he’s never done before. Now that is really exciting. I have never seen anybody do this sort of performance before.
“And he was generous in every way. He became such a good friend. I really, really loved him. He is so much fun. He didn’t have to give me all that. And he did.”
Hewson’s own canny performance gives depth to a teen that might otherwise be a blob of eyeliner around the margins. She was, in the parlance of red-top newspapers, “the toast of Sundance” at that film festival earlier this year.
“She has such sadness about her,” says Hewson. “The story of her family: her brother missing and her mom losing her mind basically. I wanted to make sure that she had some joy in her. I wanted to make sure she is not just a saddo.
“When I first read about this girl, there were aspects of her I could relate to. Being a 16-year-old girl and being confused and uncomfortable in your own skin; any teenager can relate to that. But the loss of her brother, the violence – those parts I couldn’t relate to. I had to step out of myself to connect with that.”
This is only Hewson’s third proper gig as an actor following on from The 27 Club, a student feature, and The Script’s 2010 promo video for For The First Time. She landed that job without the casting director knowing that she is the second daughter of Bono and Ali Hewson.
So what’s all this acting nonsense about? Can’t she get a proper job like rock star or activist?
“I know. I don’t know anybody in my family who was an actor. Maybe like a great grandparent might have been. But I was always surrounded by really artistic people, really inspiring people. And that really rubbed off on me.
“It’s the same with my brothers and sister. We are all quite eccentric in our own ways. We’re all doing our own thing. We all play music. We all did so many extra-curricular activities after school it was sickening.”
Still; it’s tricky trying to strike out on one’s own when your dad is the lead singer of U2. She’s keenly aware, she says, that everyone is watching.
“People always say: ‘Oh, of course you are going into the entertainment business with your dad there already.’ But it is really natural and really common for kids to follow their parents in any profession.
“I get given a hard time but I guess I have that performing gene. It’s hard to be around a family like mine where there is so much going on – so much art happening – and not get that bug.”
Her parents, though not initially thrilled by the idea, have warmed to Eve’s new profession. Younger brothers Elijah Bob Patricus Guggi Q (12) and John Abraham (10) are also cheering Eve on from home.
“My brothers are the cutest about me being an actor,” she says. “They are so desperate for me to get a job. Even if I do an audition and don’t get it, my younger brother John will be like: ‘Don’t worry. You will get a job. I promise.’ They are all really supportive. It’s so sweet.”
This Must Be the Place is on general release
