He may be chained to a radiator in his latest role but Dublin actor Aidan Gillen refuses to be tied down, writes Michael Dwyer
This afternoon Aidan Gillen will spend several hours chained to a radiator, barefoot and wearing just a grubby T-shirt and shorts. He will do this again tonight and every night, Sundays excepted, until the middle of June. It's his new job, as he puts it, as one of the protagonists in the critically lauded London production of the Frank McGuinness play, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, which closely observes three men held hostage in the Lebanon: an Irish journalist (Gillen), an American doctor (Jonny Lee Miller) and an English teacher (David Threlfall).
When we met at London's New Ambassadors theatre last week, Gillen noted how restrictive it is to be so confined for a play. Despite this, one London review noted that "Gillen is a febrile ball of energy" in the play. "Because these guys are stuck in a room, they treat words like treasure," Gillen says. "They have to use their wit and imagination to stay sane and remain human in desperate circumstances. Luckily, the three characters are intelligent, so you can listen to them for two hours or so. It's good to have dialogue of that quality when you can't move very much."
A remarkably adventurous and versatile actor, Gillen, who turned 37 last week, is widely respected, but he says he wonders sometimes if people know he's Irish, given that he has worked so extensively abroad.
He was back in his native Dublin last year for one of his increasingly rare Irish jobs, starring in Fintan Connolly's engaging romantic drama, Trouble With Sex, in which Gillen plays Conor Flynn, an insecure single man dutifully running his father's bar and tentatively getting involved with an ambitious young lawyer (Renee Weldon).
"Conor is a quiet guy, a bit lonely and dissatisfied with where he's at," Gillen says. "When I read that I wasn't sure what to make of him. One day this woman comes into his bar and they embark on a journey where they learn about themselves. In one sense, Conor seemed like a blank page, but blank pages are good because you can do things with them.
"I had seen Fintan's first film, Flick, and I was surprised at how assured and how handsome it was, as it cost so little to make. It just flowed. I didn't know Renee Weldon at all, and it's good acting with people you don't know. In a situation like that, you can make up all kinds of things.
"It was shot quickly, which I quite like, in just 28 days. Everyone was chilled out and relaxed on the film. It was great to be working in Dublin again and with people who were doing the film not for the money, but for the love of the work."
The youngest of six children in a Drumcondra family, Aidan Gillen was born Aidan Murphy. "When I was growing up, I definitely had no idea I was going to be an actor," he says. "There was this guy who lived on my street and we used to hang around with other guys from the area, always getting up to mischief. Someone decided he should be distracted from that way of life, so he started going to the Dublin Youth Theatre on Gardiner Street. One night I followed him in there and it was only then I knew he went there. And they started giving me small parts.
"This came out of the blue, but I got totally caught up in the environment. There were all these artistic kids from all over the city, a surprisingly mixed group of posh and working-class kids, and some really good actors - Eanna MacLiam, Andrew Connolly, Anto Nolan, David Gorry and many others. It was a whole different world and it became my life. And I'm still on that track that started there."
Many of their plays were staged at the Project Arts Centre. "That opened up another world to me. There was always so much going on there. I started going to art openings and seeing all the early productions by Rough Magic and the Passion Machine, which blew me away. I was 14, and I used to hang around town all the time and scam my way free into everything." When he was 18, Gillen got a bit part, credited as "youth at liquor store", in Jack Clayton's film of the Brian Moore novel The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, which featured Maggie Smith.
"I got the job by door-stepping Jack Clayton," he says. "I was wearing rags, looking like an urchin. I had read John Huston's autobiography, An Open Book, which mentioned Clayton, so we had that to talk about. So he gave me this tiny role. I had four lines and I forgot one of them so I mumbled it, but they left it in the film."
Another small film role followed in The Courier before Gillen got his breakthrough role in Robin Lefevre's production of A Handful of Stars, one of the plays in Billy Roche's Wexford trilogy. This involved another wily act of door-stepping.
"I ambushed Robin Lefevre at half seven one morning in Dublin. I was determined to get a job as an actor. I had been acting for years, but I decided I needed to make a living. I got the part and came over to London. We did the play at the Bush. It was a hit and I got a really good agent."
He was credited as Aidan Murphy in those days. "When I came over to London, I was still using my name. Then I got a letter from the other Aidan Murphy, whoever he is, saying he owned the name. I had only just joined the union so I had to change my name. I was known as Adrian Murphy for two jobs, which was a mistake, because I didn't like people calling me Adrian. So I started to use my mother's surname, Gillen."
HIS EARLY STAGE work included two Druid productions directed by Garry Hynes - the Irish tour of Lover's Meeting by Louis D'Alton and Lennox Robinson's Drama at Innish at the Abbey - but he has not been on an Irish stage since 1993, when he was in Belfry, another play in Billy Roche's trilogy, at the Peacock.
More and more work came his way in London, including three productions at the adventurous Almeida theatre in Islington - as Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World, the title role in David Hare's adaptation of Chekov's Platonov, and a fearless portrayal of Ariel in Jonathan Kent's radical treatment of The Tempest.
"He had this crazy ambition for The Tempest, but it really came together," Gillen says. "The design was an integral part of that production. They built a chamber under the stage, flooded it and put in a hydraulic lift. They had this pool of water on the set with glass perspex bricks, so Prospero would appear to walk on water."
His hair bleached blond, Gillen made his first appearance as Ariel, swinging upside down on a trapeze while somehow delivering his lines at the same time. "It was a spectacular entrance," he laughs. "Then I got into the water and went under. It was eight feet deep. We had this Man from Atlantis-type tunnel with no air in it. To sink properly, I had to wear a diving belt with weights. There was talk of me wearing goggles because I couldn't see under the water, but they would have looked ridiculous so I opted for some luminous tape on bricks under the water to guide me. There was something really magical about it all - dark magic. It was exhilarating to do."
At least as fearless is his dynamic portrayal in the very best of his many TV roles, as Stuart, the blunt-spoken, brashly promiscuous gay man at the core of the abrasive, riveting and sexually explicit Channel 4 series, Queer as Folk. "When I read it, I thought it was the best part I'd read in a long time. I knew it was risqué and that I was exposing myself, but I didn't mind that," Gillen says.
"I was doing a film in America at the time and when I got back it was over, so I missed all the fuss. Some advertisers did pull out. I thought I might have been letting myself in for trouble because we did get death threats on the internet, and around that time a nail bomb was placed in a gay bar in London. But the only hassle I got about the show was in Dublin. I was in Rathmines one day and this guy pulled up in a car and made some limp-wristed gestures at me. I went straight over and threatened him. I just can't abide that kind of shit."
Gillen demonstrated astriking screen presence in his first substantial film role, in Antonia Bird's gritty 1993 urban drama, Safe, and followed it with several edgy independent pictures - Mojo, Buddy Boy, The Low Down - and the Irish productions Circle of Friends, Gold in the Streets and Some Mother's Son. And he got to work with two of the great Irish actors - Peter O'Toole in The Final Curtain and Richard Harris in My Kingdom.
"O'Toole was gentle and elegant, and I felt very relaxed working with him. One night when we were shooting My Kingdom in Liverpool, I was summoned to go out with Harris, which was good news. We had a great night out in a really rough bar down by the docks. There was a queue of scally kids and women in leopard skin outfits, all asking him to sign £10 notes, and Harris was winking at me while he signed them and buying endless drinks. We had to do a scene the next day, so I thought he was checking me out to see if I could hack it. Then he told me O'Toole had said I was okay."
IN THE PAST two years Gillen has been making his mark in the US. Having stabbed the character played by Harold Pinter in the movie of Mojo, he was cast with Patrick Stewart and Kyle MacLachlan in the Broadway production of Pinter's The Caretaker, which earned Gillen a Tony nomination.
"Theatre can be terrifying, but it's exhilarating - and it can be addictive," Gillen says. "It's high pressure on Broadway because you know that if they don't like you they will crucify you. And the stakes just felt a bit higher because I was so far away. They do about five press nights there, so it doesn't make you feel very good in your stomach for a week. I would prefer to do a matinee on a Thursday. But I don't do what I do because I want people to say in a newspaper that I'm a good actor or because I might win an award."
Newspapers have been saying what a good actor he is in The Wire, the HBO TV series dealing with crime and corruption in Baltimore. Gillen has a recurring role as a city council member, Tommy Carcetti.
"He is a very ambitious Italian-Irish-American councillor with his eye on being made mayor of the city. Baltimore is a rough place, a troubled city with one of the highest murder rates in America. It was described to me as a city in love with its victimhood. I went to city council meetings there and there was so much apathy there.
"It's novelistic TV in that every episode doesn't have a conclusion. It attracts great writers - Richard Price, Denis Lehane - and great directors. As an HBO production, it doesn't have any of those restrictions you get on the networks. I'm really proud of it and I'm looking forward to going back for six months this year for the fourth series, where I'm running for mayor."
Gillen will spend the summer in London with his wife, Olivia O'Flanagan - they met in their teens in Dublin - and their young children, Berry and Joe.
He is considering several British TV show offers in the gap between the end of his current London stage commitment and his return to Baltimore.
"I like that, moving between theatre, television and films," he says. "I think I've worked in all three media in equal amounts, which you really have to do if you want to get good parts to play all the time."
Trouble With Sex is on general release. Someone Who'll Watch Over Me is at the New Ambassadors Theatre, London, until Jun 18. The Wire, Tuesdays on TG4