A New Life: Geoff Gould drifted into mortgages and loans before stumbling onto the stage, writes Elaine Edwards.
Geoff Gould certainly didn't make the transition from banking to theatre for the money.
Without being asked, he reveals he'll probably earn about €12,000 this year and he's already worked "round the clock" since January.
"To be honest with you, the bottom line is that the Government still isn't spending enough money on the arts - you wonder why anybody stays in it," he says.
"There are some incredibly talented people living around Ireland on breadcrumbs as actors and I couldn't tell you how much I admire them - it's just a joy to work with them."
Originally from north Cork - Fermoy, Mallow, Doneraile - Gould (43) left school in the unfortunate year of 1981, at the outset of a grim economic decade.
"There wasn't a lot of work around at the time. Everyone was going to college and I was accepted, but at the same time, you were conscious of the lack of work," he says.
"I went to college for a couple of years and flunked it. I started a mechanical engineering degree and I think I must have got the lowest results ever in the University of Limerick. I didn't drink or smoke - I was a real altar boy at the time, but I just couldn't do it.
"I went into the army for a year just to mess around and then went into UCC for a European Studies degree and didn't like that either."
Eventually, it became a question of "you'd better find a job or your Da's going to kill you", he says.
So he found a job at the then Cork Savings Bank and spent nearly 15 years there, rising to assistant lending manager, dealing with the intricacies of mortgages and agricultural loans.
"I had a great time and they were fantastic people - it wasn't that I was miserable. But I wasn't really good at it."
Gould's accidental tourist route into theatre began when he went shopping for dinner one day.
"All I did was buy two chops - that was the worst mistake of my life. I went into the butcher's next door to the bank and there was this lovely woman from Mallow, who said she'd heard me singing in the rugby club on Saturday night and asked me to do the lead in a musical. I said no, absolutely no way. Then that afternoon she dropped me in a script and a tape and said: 'Be up there tonight at eight o'clock.' I knew I was no good on stage but I thoroughly enjoyed the process and it was like a completely new family. It was like going home really."
He eventually ended up as artistic director of the Everyman Theatre in Cork, to the surprise of the arts world and the horror of his managers in the bank.
"One of the problems for a venue manager is that the financial side is as important as the artistic side really. And I was probably the only person at the time who had a bit of both. I had a diploma in accounting and that's kind of handy when you're trying to read the messy side and the dangerous side of the business because it stops you from going bankrupt."
He ran the Everyman from 1996 to 2001 but really wanted to direct and he secured one of two coveted places at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda).
"I think the London move was the biggest move. People talk about leaving the bank and how hard it was but going to London was way harder."
The support of his wife, Jacinta Kiely, was then, and still is, invaluable, he says.
Gould travelled between London and Cork, where his wife, a successful archaeologist, was still living.
"I couldn't drag her over. So I spent three-and-a-half years there trying to break into the business, with me and Jacinta back and forwards, back and forwards. It's a nightmare when I look at it now - I don't know how she did it. She's a wonderful woman and I just couldn't do what I do without her. Jacinta's my best friend and nobody can change that for me. I don't think I'd have been as generous to her as she has been to me and that's hard for me to say."
Since his return, he reckons he's still spent more time away from his home in Ballydehob than he has in it. He has just finished work on Conal Creedon's Second City Trilogy run at the Opera House, and was also spending time in student accommodation in Dublin while directing the Ouroboros production.
But he looks forward to soon getting some time alone on a boat with a fishing rod for company. His home place is "stunning", he says.
"It's a bit mad really, because sometimes I'd be in London in the morning and it was manic, and by the afternoon I'd be in Ballydehob and there wouldn't be a soul around. You'd be going, 'isn't the world a brilliant place?'"
Geoff Gould directs Making History by Brian Friel at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Trinity College Dublin, until Saturday September 10th. Box office: 01-6082461.