No airs for `Ashes' child star

Joe Breen is getting restless. When you're nine years old and you've already been a guest on The Late Show with David Letterman, newspaper interviews can be a chore. How many more questions will there be, he wants to know. "Just a few," The Irish Times assures him. "A few is three, my Daddy always used to say."

Soon he is curling up in his chair, head in hands. "Are we done now? Are we done? Please! You've got enough!" He reaches for the tape. Click. Interview over.

Joe is not being rude, just disarmingly honest. He has recently returned from the US where he did a series of interviews about his role as the young Frank McCourt in the film of Angela's Ashes, and the questions are getting repetitive. At one point, he interrupts a discussion about his acting abilities by declaring: "I have loads of cows though, and sheep." Now farming - there's an interesting subject he'd be only too happy to discuss.

Not that every interview has been the same. David Letterman asked him if he was married. An Italian journalist, without Letterman's off-the-wall sense of humour, asked what Joe thought of the situation in Northern Ireland. "I don't know," he replied. "I'm only nine."

When his father Michael, a farmer from Tinnasrule, near Ferns, Co Wexford, recounts that story, Joe chips in with the startling comment: "My Daddy has a gun for shooting crows - and dogs when he's in a bad temper!" His father explodes with laughter.

There is never a dull moment, it seems, when Joe is around. When Michael and his wife Stephanie - an award-winning amateur actor - spotted an ad in The Irish Times seeking an extrovert child for Angela's Ashes, they knew Joe fitted the bill.

More than 15,000 young people auditioned for the three roles of Frank McCourt - at different ages - and Joe had no previous acting experience. "We hoped after he was called for the second audition that he might get some part but we never suspected he would get such a big role . . . the whole thing was just a bit of fun," says Michael.

"I love this question!" declares Joe, when asked how he got the part. He then races through the whole, for him, mindnumbing story: "I went up to Dublin for the audition and a few weeks later we were called back again, the same thing - up to the lady reading your lines - and they took a picture of us and then we were called back again and a few weeks later we heard that we'd got the part."

Right, but why does he love the question? "Because you're the first lad to ask me," he replies with heavy sincerity. "You are, I swear." He is, in fact, a hilarious interviewee - "come on, carry on," he says during a brief pause - and it's easy to see why Angela's Ashes director Alan Parker talked in December 1999 about how much he would miss him and Ciaran Owens, who played McCourt between the ages of eight and 13. "I'd adopt them tomorrow! I'll go home for Christmas and sit at the table and wonder where Joe and Ciaran are." The affection is mutual. Joe "loved" working for Parker, though the director did lose his temper once. "I wouldn't blame him because he had loads of kids to look after . . . we were eating porridge [during a scene] and I don't like porridge. I put the bowl out in front of me and stopped and . . . he got a bit mad."

So what exactly did Joe do wrong? "I don't know - oh, never mind anyway. I'm not really positive what happened. It was over porridge anyway." So Parker was nice most of the time, then? "All the time," he corrects me.

Joe spent three months, from mid-September last year, working on the film in Dublin, Limerick, Cork and Southampton. A tutor was on hand for classes when he wasn't required on set. The hardest thing was the occasional early morning start but the rest, including remembering his lines, appears to have been easy. "Joe knows the entire script," said Parker last year, "not just his own lines, but everyone else's too."

"The only thing we'd be concerned about is, obviously, we wouldn't want this to change him too much," says Michael, "but he seems to be level-headed enough . . . there's a bit more publicity to do for the film but as soon as that's over we want to get back to normal."

Far from being distracted by the whole experience, Joe, now back at school in Ferns, is distinctly underwhelmed by the notice he's getting. It will be "very embarrassing" when his friends see the film here, he says, "and I don't like talking about it". He "might" like to act again but he wants to be a farmer when he grows up.

He's already had more attention from fawning admirers than he can cope with, it seems. Without warning, he switches to an American accent: "Oh gawd, come here and look at this guy, he's so cute . . . ". His facial expression as he says this suggests he is about to vomit.

Seeing his face looking down on Times Square in New York from a giant billboard was "cool", but no more than that. He is also on the cover of the most recent print run of the Angela's Ashes book. James Byrne, a fellow fourth-class pupil, is his best friend. And is James jealous of his involvement in Angela's Ashes? "No he's not. James Byrne is never jealous."

Neither, it seems, is Joe. The "real stars" of the movie, he says, were Owens and Michael Legge, who play Frank McCourt in the latter part of the film. He also insists on a mention for Shane Murray Corcoran, who plays the young Malachy McCourt. Then there's Joe's real-life brother Martin, who is four and "brilliant at acting - put in a word for him".

He also has two sisters, Aoife (10) and Fiona (3). His siblings will help keep Joe "down to earth" says Michael. With or without their help, it seems Joe's feet are staying firmly on the ground.

Angela's Ashes is released on January 14th