TELEVISION:He's a serious actor who landed a seriously meaty role in cult US television series 'The Wire'. But despite his rising profile, Dubliner Aidan Gillen would rather not bother with celebrity, if you don't mind
IT MIGHT have all played out differently if a teenager called Aidan Murphy hadn't pushed open the door of a Gardiner Street house in the north inner city and wandered into the world of the Dublin Youth Theatre.
It was 1982, back when "celebrity" meant Gay Byrne. The Drumcondra teenager wasn't propelled by a burning childhood ambition to be an actor. He went along to DYT with a friend and he thinks his sister might have joined around the same time. Now, having spent more than half his life working outside Ireland, he is a critically acclaimed stage and television actor with a leading role in The Wire, the series that has frequently been called the "best television ever made". He has just completed his first Hollywood film, and next week TG4 viewers can see him play Mayor Tommy Carcetti as the final season of The Wirehits Irish screens.
His arrival into the theatre world may have been almost accidental, but he knew even then that it was where he wanted to be. "It was a pretty good find," he says. "It was a brilliant place to be at that age." One of the greatest features was the mix of Dublin teenagers brought together by the theatre group, making it "a lot less posh" than what he had expected.
Gillen was impressed by the professionalism the directors of DYT brought to their productions. "It felt very real." The thirst for celebrity was not a feature. "Nobody was doing it for that. It wasn't about trying to get on television or in films." Making a living from acting was tough in 1980s Dublin. The youngest of six children, four boys and two girls, he left home for London as a skinny 19-year-old in 1988, his first time away from home. The actor has been shedding skins ever since, starting with his name - the Actors' Equity list in London already had an Aidan Murphy, so he took on his mother's maiden name and Aidan Gillen was born.
His first professional job was a part in Billy Roche's A Handful of Stars. He got himself a good agent and instead of a bedsit in Kilburn he found digs with the director of the Bush Theatre, Jenny Topper.
On his website, where he answers written questions from fans, he says he hasn't auditioned for a part since 1995. "Anything I do now, I get offered. If there's something good going down, I'll chase it up." He says he would "rather be electrocuted than watch five minutes of Big Brother".
A fan asking for a signed picture is told by Gillen that he'll sign a programme or someone's arm, but he doesn't keep a stack of signed glossies to send out.
It is this seriousness about his craft that comes across when Gillen speaks. There are long pauses when he thinks about the answers. You get the impression that The Wirehas provided one of the most exhilarating acting jobs of his career, not because it is a big American cop show, but because of the seriousness with which the writers, directors and other actors take their jobs.
He is proudest of some of the unsung roles in his career, playing Frank, a single London artist in Jamie Thrave's feature film The Low Down, and the characters Baby and Skinny, both of which he played, in Jez Butterworth's play and film Mojo. It was his role as Stuart Alan Jones in the Channel 4 drama Queer as Folkthat started getting him recognised in the street. He played a gay advertising executive in the series with jaw-droppingly graphic sex scenes, many of which have been cut together and set to music by fans on YouTube. Playing another Englishman in a Broadway production of Harold Pinter's The Caretakerbrought him to the attention of the casting directors for The Wirein 2003. "I hadn't seen The Wire, the first two seasons - I was living in London. But once they started talking about it, I knew it was a serious piece of television."
One of his first meetings was with series producer Bob Colesberry, who played the character Ray Cole on screen. Before Gillen talks about his own role in the series, he fills in the story of Colesberry. Gillen was impressed by the 57-year-old producer and his hands-on approach to the show, but "He died four weeks after I met him after he had had routine heart surgery."
Gillen plays Tommy Carcetti, who runs for mayor of Baltimore in the fourth season of the show.Was it a joy being handed the scripts with such killer lines?
"Yes," he says enthusiastically. " The Wireis so well-written and so carefully crafted." Each episode opens with one such line picked out in white type on a black background with the name of the character. The fourth season focused on the schools, with all the wheeling and dealing of Carcetti's mayoral campaign run in parallel with the lives of four black teenagers whose lives are headed straight for the abyss of drugs and violence.
Has he become a big star in the States? " The Wirestill has got cult-level figures in the States. It's a show that requires a little bit of work. It doesn't have car chases and action. It's not 24or Lost. It doesn't just throw candy at you."
What it does throw are the big issues of race and poverty. Season four has shown a wretched side of modern American life that has to be uncomfortable for audiences. "It has a lot of grim situations, but I can always see the hope in it. It tells the story of a neglected and troubled American city.
"For all the talk about bleakness and hopelessness, it would be a lot more hopeless had someone said: 'Let's not make it.' It gives a voice to those characters and begins to look at what's wrong with our consumer society.
" David Simon and Ed Burns are from Baltimore, and, okay, they're left-of-centre, but they're Americans and they love the city they come from and they want to make it work."
Playing a city politician involved a good deal of research to unlock the nuances of the complicated system of US municipal politics. He plays an ambitious councillor, the only white candidate in the race in a predominantly black city, with a brand of dead-eyed cynicism as slick as his gelled quiff. When he is elected mayor, something shifts. "One of the things I found interesting about the character was that he started off selfish and self-centred, but he became more idealistic as time went on. I don't think Carcetti is supposed to be totally self-serving. He developed a conscience." One of the challenging aspects of the series is that the lines between good and bad are not clearly drawn in any characters. "There was always going to be ego involved. Carcetti would have been in politics because it was in the family. It was only later he found it was his true calling."
The fifth series deals with the media's approach to crime reporting and politics. "It was envisaged as a five-series arc by David Simon from the start. But he had to fight every time, fly from Baltimore to convince HBO to make each series. Then season four was met with universal acclaim." The makers of The Wirehave moved on to another uncomfortable subject. They have made the miniseries Generation Kill, about the first 40 days of the invasion of Iraq, based on the work of Rolling Stonejournalist Evan Wright, who was embedded with the US marines.
Gillen left his padded mayoral chair in Baltimore for his first Hollywood role, a part as a villain in an action movie. Twelve Roundsis directed by Finnish director Renny Harlin, who made Cliffhangerand The Long Kiss Goodnight. Set in New Orleans, it involves plenty of new stuff such as "helicopters and guns which was quite fun." There has also been a stint in the West End for a four-month run of Glengarry Glen Ross. And Gillen returned to Dublin last year to play Teach in David Mamet's American Buffalo.
He has time off now, he says, and no definite plans for what comes next. He is back in London enjoying spending time with his daughter, Berry, who's 10, and his son, Joe, who's seven. He gets back to Dublin frequently and enjoyed the feeling of "being rooted" that his three-month stay last year brought.
So he doesn't see himself walking into the Big Brotherhouse anytime soon? There is a long pause. "I would never go down that road," he says simply.
There is no funny side to that question.
The Wireis on TG4 Monday July at 10.30pm
