Photo by Jonny Birch.
I grew up in Cork city. I took long breaks from school in Turners Cross to make bad films and join theatre companies. ended up at Trinity doing an English and Theatre Studies degree. It was far less practical than I’d hoped and dropped out. An excellent friend died suddenly and woke up to the fact that we don’t necessarily have decades to make the right choices, so started hustling up work as an actor and auditioning for drama schools.
I became an actor by telling stories and listening to them. I would sit on the landline for hours with friends making up stories and talking about sex and heartbreak. Another pal and would sit across from each other and try to tell each other the saddest story we could muster until one of us cried. It feels obnoxious in hindsight, but it was about exploring empathy – the fact that the world was bigger than us and bigger than Cork.