Dónall Ó Héalai on his new role: ‘A few people have remarked on the haircut’

It wasn’t as if Dónall Ó Héalai didn’t know that acting was a sometimes precarious profession.

A graduate of Bow Street Academy and New York’s Stella Adler Studio of Acting, Ó Héalai could always turn to his first cousin, Muireann Ahern, for career advice. Ahern, who runs the pioneering Lovett Theatre with her husband Louis Lovett, proved “a huge inspiration and help”, he says.

By age 30, moreover, Ó Héalai could look back on a long and storied career. He was still a teenager when he landed his first recurring television role as the secondary school heartthrob in TG4 teen drama series Aifric.

He’s worked steadily since, landing work in movies and TV on both sides of the Atlantic. At home, he starred in Seacht, a college drama chronicling the lives of seven students at the arts department of Queen’s University in Belfast; abroad, he starred as a tortured artist taking part in a study of dreams and sleep paralysis in the New York-set psychological thriller Impossible Monsters.

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Still, at some point in 2018, the actor – a graduate from Maynooth University who was awarded the Dr HH Stewart literary prize during his time there – found himself considering alternative career choices.

“It’s funny because I was in New York about five years ago,” he recalls. “It wasn’t that the doors were not opening, so much that I kind of stepped away really from the industry and moved up to Buffalo, upstate, because I had some friends there and it was so much cheaper to live there than in the city. And while I was there, Paddy [Hayes] got in touch about Foscadh and Tom [O’Sullivan]  got in touch about Arracht. And that really changed things for me. I’m just beyond grateful for the schemes and funding that support these kinds of stories. I just hope that continues because I know there are others who share that kind of gratitude and have found their feet with that support.”

Acclaim

Released to much acclaim last year, the Irish-language feature Arracht starred Ó Héalai as Colmán Sharkey, a fisherman who ends up on the run after taking in a stranger on the eve of the Great Hunger. An unlikely alliance with a young orphaned girl offers Sharkey a chance at redemption and makes for the heart of a very affecting film. Arracht was named best Irish feature by the Dublin Film Critics’ Circle at the Dublin International Film Festival in 2020, before earning 11 nominations at the Irish Film & Television Academy (Ifta) awards, including a best actor nod for Ó Héalai, and a tidy sum at the Irish box-office.

I'm always amazed when I see someone who's directing, like,  a worldwide show or something. And I think: Oh, they started at TG4

“When you look at the success of a film like Parasite and the success of shows like Unorthodox for Netflix, I think it reflects that audiences have become maybe more accepting of subtitles,” says the actor. “And it’s great to see kind of Irish work being received in that way.”

In the history of our national cinema, it’s common to understand a group of pioneering filmmakers in the late 1970s and early 1980s – including Bob Quinn, Joe Comerford, Cathal Black and Pat Murphy – as constituting the new wave of Irish film. Four decades later, and audiences are about to reap the benefits of a new wave of Irish language cinema, or nuathonn scannáin Ghaeilge.

TG4, notes Ó Héalai, is a huge catalyst for our new, blossoming Irish-language film industry.

“I’m always amazed when I see someone who’s directing, like, a worldwide show or something,” says the actor. “And I think: Oh, they started at TG4. But I’m seeing that type of trajectory more and more.”

Arriving on the heels of the Oscar-longlisted Arracht, An Cailín Ciúin, a prizewinner at this year’s Berlinale, follows Cáit (Catherine Clinch), a nine-year-old girl sent away from her crowded family home to stay with her mother’s people. In the big-hearted Róise & Frank, a grieving widow (Bríd Ní Neachtain) befriends a stray dog who may or may not be her reincarnated husband.

Multiplex

Before these titles make it to a multiplex near you, there’s Foscadh, a heartbreaking new drama from first-time director Seán Breathnach and Ireland’s 2022 entry for the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category. Based on the characters in the novel The Thing about December by Donal Ryan, Foscadh stars Ó Héalai, in a remarkable performance, as the reclusive and poignantly innocent John Cunliffe. At 28, following the death of his overprotective parents, John suddenly has to contend with running a farm, monetary offers from a neighbouring development, a new drinking buddy and a possible romance.

I think there are people like John out there. They're still very much a part of this country's landscape

“We had very creatively fertile ground to work with,” says Ó Héalai. “Donal Ryan is a wonderful author and so much of his brilliant novel, The Thing about December, takes place in John’s mind, that this had to be very different. He has to fend for himself, and I guess kind of navigate life and relationships and all of these things for the first time. So there is a coming-of-age element to the film. But it also absolutely highlights the kind of isolation of rural Ireland. I think there are people like John out there. They’re still very much a part of this country’s landscape. And finding a character like John is quite a tightrope. I thought about people who reminded me of John growing up and took as much inspiration from them as I could. Because if you’re heavy-handed, the film would be too much to bear.

“Seán worked in a way where we had a lot of workshops in preparation for the film, which was fantastic. We had a few versions of John, shall we say, before we kind of settled on what felt real in terms of personality and physicality and what felt honest to the characters Donal had written.”

He laughs. “And then there was the haircut. That is definitely something that a few people have remarked upon.”

Veterans

There are many wonderful TG4 acting veterans but, with two leading film roles under his belt, Dónall Ó Héalai is the first bona fide Irish-language movie star. He certainly has pedigree. Born in Indreabhán, the Connemara native grew up speaking Irish as his first language. Against all odds, he has carved out a career – including roles in TG4’s crime drama Corp agus Anam and Taibhdhearc’s stage production of Mícheál Ó Conghaile’s Jude – that has featured as many Irish language roles as English-speaking ones. As the founder of cultural initiative Celtic Consciousness, he hopes to raise international awareness of his native tongue. In this spirit, he gave a 2018 TEDxBerkeley talk on The Irish Language and Beauty.

His biggest hit to date, however, is far more unlikely. Released in 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2 casts Ó Héalai as a Donegal immigrant locked in a feud with the game’s main character, Arthur Morgan (played by Sligo-born Roger Clark). The video game is among the world’s best-selling games with over 43 million copies sold.

“People come up to me and say: Oh, I’ve killed you loads of times,” says Ó Héalai. “That’s good to know. I had no idea about the game beforehand. It was a motion capture performance in this place in Long Island. And there was a huge amount of non-disclosure forms. And there were all these rigs – it was incredible to see. And a lot of Irish actors were involved. But I’ve actually never got far enough in the game to see myself. I’m useless at it.”

Next up for the actor, who was named one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow for 2020, there’s the TV drama North Sea Connection, co-starring Sinéad Cusack, and the boxing movie Clinch. This month, however, he’ll be in Los Angeles for awards season, where he’ll be honoured at the Irish-American Oscar Wilde event with a special “Wilde Card”’ statuette, alongside Judi Dench, Kenneth Branagh and Jamie Dornan.

“I’m still really getting my head around it,” he says. “I’m definitely looking forward to it. And just massively grateful and excited to be invited. I’ve been at the event two years ago, but it’s a bit surreal to be a part of it.”

Foscadh is on release from March 11