ACTOR IN EARNEST

DESCRIBING herself as "the afterthought" in a family of four - "the next one up is nine years older than me, then the gap is 12 years and then up to 5 years" - actress Rosaleen Linehan wonders if there is a connection between being a delayed youngest child and acting.

Or even being slightly peculiar, like an alien. When you're that much younger, you really are an only child. It's different nowadays: I don't think being an only child now is the same as it used to be. There used to be more loneliness about it. Children now have far more freedom and more ways of mixing with other kids. Being an only child is no longer a problem." Then she laughs and admits the advantages are mixed. "No matter what age you are, you are always the baby. My mother was 46 when I was born; she died at 95."

Does this mean the baby of the family can walk into middle age and continue enjoying a perpetually extended childhood? "You always feel you're young. I was always in the position of being the youngest, at home, at school, with my friends. But if you; are the youngest, some people expect you to behave a certain way. There will always be an aunt who remembers the way you were as a child and will expect you not to change, no matter what age you are." She adopts a Shirley Temple pose, knees together, slightly bashful.

Many performers prove coy about their age, is she? She is currently appearing in The Importance Of Being Earnest at the Abbey and, swift as an arrow, Lady Bracknell's answer scores a bullseye: "No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating..."

Straight backed and in control, Lady Bracknell continues: "Thirty five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained 35 for years. Lady Dumbleton is an instance in point. To my own knowledge she has been 35 ever since she arrived at the age of 40, which was many years ago now.

The formidable Bracknell takes her leave and Linehan says: "Sorry, I couldn't resist it. I've never had any problem about admitting to my age, but I like that `no woman should ever be quite accurate ... so calculating'. It's the perfect answer."

Age is a problem for actresses. "Look at the way they tend to disappear in Hollywood once they hit 40. But I was never a glamour type, I haven't the face for it. I have always been a character actress."

The dressing room is small, uncluttered and quite spartan - more like a waiting room. A small phrase book lies on the dressing table: Brush Up Your Russian. Is she learning another language? Her face lights up. Not exactly, but that book is hilarious. There is wonderful stuff in it. It's a series of conversations. The two people go to Russia, they sit in restaurants, go to the opera. When they are at the opera, one of them says: `Let's sit down and watch the crowd. Look at this charming young couple. They seem to be discussing something very earnestly. I bet it's the Five Year Plan. Someone told me that even young lovers speak of nothing else.' The whole book is like that, this old style propaganda full of praise the system.

She says Russia was always one of her obsessions: "But then I spent two summers working there over the last few years and it opened my eyes. The conditions people live in . . I think it is worse now than it was during communism. The imbalances are greater.

There are no windows in the dressing room and Linehan's green tracksuit bottoms prove quite a contrast to her favourite Lady Bracknell costume on its hanger. "Isn't it wonderful? Look at the fabric: this is the most beautifully made costume I have ever had." The elegant blue jacket has 42 buttons, 15 on each sleeve and 12 down the front. It is not designed for dressing at speed. "It takes a half hour just to put it on. There's a corset. Just look at the skirt. It's so beautiful." She stands back and looks at it with a mixture of shrewd appraisal and wonder.

A career spanning 36 years may have made her one of the most famous faces in Ireland, but the real Rosaleen Linehan is probably tricky to track down. "We are always changing, changing as people. It's as if you know the sort of person you want to be and sometimes you are exactly, but often you find yourself with no control over who you are. Strange, isn't it?"

While she is enjoying the play - "it's a gorgeous, crafted piece. It is like a beautifully inlaid Sheraton bureau, polished and intricate" - and loves Wilde's elegant language, she does not like Lady Bracknell. "I like playing it, but I don't like her. The play is about class and a class system that is alien to us - I hope. It is very English and I'm very Irish.

"She's the first character I have ever played who has absolutely no redeeming quality. Bessie, for instance, becomes heroic, even Arkadina for all her faults is at least financially supporting all the others. But Lady Bracknell is a total Tory snob. When I was preparing for the part I read the Ellmann biography of Wilde and I took this sentence that gave me the key to to it. I always find something when I'm doing my reading for a show and it helps lead me in - and there it is in Ellmann... he said: `Lady Bracknell is issuing British orders which are immediately disobeyed by Irish hearts', and I think that is the whole point of her. She doesn't talk to anyone, she just walks through people's feelings but no one listens to her bombast."

ALTHOUGH Bracknell dominates the play, it is actually a small part: "You are on for about nine minutes and then there's a wait of an hour and a half" - while wearing that corset. "Apart from the corset I don't mind the wait, and I can enjoy the delightful second act as the love story emerges with the four delicious young ones and the wonderful duo of Canon Chasuable and Miss Prism played by Harry Towb and Doreen Keogh." She describes her Lady Bracknell as "flamboyant and totally unsympathetic".

Aware that the role can edge dangerously close to caricature, she says: "There's a fine line - and there's that temptation of knowing that people want it to go that bit higher."

Expectations and preconceptions follow her around. Throughout a professional career which began within two years of leaving UCD - "I joined Dram Soc on the day I arrived" - Linehan has always been seen in Ireland as a comedian. In fact, despite the many triumphs of the second, serious half of her dramatic career, there are those who still expect her to sing a funny song or tell a joke. Since making a conscious break from comedy, she has achieved a string of successes, such as her acclaimed portrayal of Winnie in Happy Days as part of the Gate Theatre's international Beckett Festival in New York and London; Kate in Dancing At Lughnasa; her menacing and ultimately moving Bessie Burgess in The Plough And The Stars; Feste in Twelfth Night; her one woman show, The Mother Of All The Behans, and her portrayal of a broken hearted mother in Carthaginians.

For 25 years previously, she appeared in countless revues and comedy shows, culminating in a series of five two handers with Des Keogh. There was also the radio programme, Get An Earful Of This, which ran from 1967 until 1981 and was a forerunner of Scrap Saturday.

"The environment has changed totally," she says. "There is nothing new now about being anti clerical, but there was in the 1950s and 1960s." Whatever about the so called "new honesty", her generation, she says, is still bitter about the abuses of the clergy, and generations of young people scarred for life.

The early 1970s saw irreverent mock heroic songs such as The Dog Who Died For Ireland, a parody of the glorification of the blood lusty rebel songs of the day. Also memorable were I Wish I Was A Protestant and the truly unforgettable lyrics of Soap Your Arse And Slide Backwards Up A Rainbow. Of the last mentioned she says, in a businesslike voice: "I have arranged to have my son play this disguised as a Bach fugue at my funeral, just as I leave the church."

At times her revue performances outraged members of the public: one woman told her she was not fit to be a mother.

Once she decided to concentrate on serious theatre, she knew she would not change her mind. Her four children were grown up and it was time to do something else: a definite break had to be made.

The role of comedian was not easily shrugged off. In her first classical dramatic role, she played Arkadina in Tom Kilroy's adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull.. "When I came in and said `Constantine has been shot', the audience started laughing."

She got poor reviews and says matter of factly that initially she was treated as if she had stepped out of place. "There was an affectionate following who were disappointed and some of them still long for the revues. It's funny, there are people who expect me to be always just about to burst out laughing. I don't smile all the time. It's just that I have slightly buck teeth . . . they're always forcing their way out."

Public perceptions can be hurtful and she has learned not to read reviews, or to listen too much to what people say. She illustrates: "I remember rushing to appear on the Late, Late Show. We had just come off stage from The Plough And The Stars" - having just died a heroic death as Bessie Burgess - "and I dashed into a taxi, still wearing my costume and wiping the blood off my face. Trying to straighten my hair and change my clothes, and I'm still in the back seat being driven to RTE"... the narrative gathers momentum; there is generous detail; great energy; big gestures prepare the listener for a happy punch line. "There I am, I rush on to the set. `Hello Gay.'" Gay Byrne introduced the new Rosaleen Linehan, serious actress, to the people of Ireland. So far so good. Then: "A caller phoned in and she said something like `Rosaleen Linehan is seen as someone who is always smiling but I met her and I thought she was very cold.' No one said anything. I was left sitting there asking: `Cold? Are you sure you mean me? I don't think I have cold in my nature.' I was so embarrassed and too tired to have the answer I would have had later. I should have said: `I'm not cold. I may have been irritated or cross. I can be irritable or impatient. I do get irritated, but I'm not cold.'"

"It is strange the way other people are telling you what they have decided you really are. We have no control over how other people see us."

The child of a Donegal father and a Belfast mother, Linehan was born in Dublin - "No 5, Appian Way. A very large house with two very elegant rooms which we used at Christmas and the rest of it was [for] life. Not just for ourselves but for all of fur cousins who came down from Donegal to go to university. There was a constant moving population of cousins. I spent my childhood summers in Donegal and when I was there I fitted easily into the middle of a family of six cousins."

Her mother, Alice, was a good singer, lively and funny, and Linehan reckons her own love of music comes from her. "I'm so happy now that our son Conor is doing so well as a pianist," she says. Her father, Daniel McMenamin, born in 1882, entered the Dail as a Cummann na nGaedheal (later Fine Gael) TD for Donegal East in 1932 and held the seat until 1961. "He was very strict. He would be described as a `crabbed but adored man', I'm sure I get my impatience from him. He was from another time."

At Loreto College at St Stephen's Green, Linehan did well and also played piano and double bass. From there she crossed the street to attend UCD where she studied economics and politics - "my father's idea, he wanted me to have a career in External Affairs". She had other ideas and went off to Switzerland where she taught at an American school. "The students were aged between 12 to 18 and were a mixture of very wealthy Hollywood kids and children of engineers and architects working in Africa and India." When she returned to Ireland, she returned to UCD and worked as an assistant to Brian Farrell. "When I left a year later, we stayed friends despite the state of his filing cabinets, and we are still friends."

HER face changes by the second - not just her expression, her whole appearance - as does her voice, from shrewd Donegal woman to south Dublin professional. She appears too practical to be a performer; there is little chummy name dropping. She tends to comment on society rather than individuals and when she remarks on the "terrifying explosion of rich, new, acting talent in Ireland - such energy, such hunger", she sounds detached about it, as if she is an observer, not a performer. Who does she admire? "There are many good actors, but ... Donal McCann. I find myself wondering `how did he do that?'"

Not wanting to sound like a "luvvie", she says there are people she must thank her agent, Aude Powell, husband Fergus Linehan - "we've been together 43 years, married for 36" - and Gate Theatre artistic director Michael Colgan. "As well as, of course, Des Keogh. And I'd really like people to know that I am proud of all the revue shows we did."

She is extremely intelligent and though an instinctive, inventive actress, she discusses acting as if it were a science. While working as assistant director on the Gate's Steven Berkoff production of Wilde's Salome in 1987, she demonstrated a technical originality and flair for stage craft as well as performance - although that was hardly surprising considering her innovative approach to portraying Feste in Joe Dowling's 1920s period production of Twelfth Night. She saw the character as a melancholic third eye, overlooking the action and played the part as an old silent movie clown, catching his weary sadness.

"Every time you play a character you are in fact pretending to be someone else. Acting involves assuming a life based on the experiences of others and observation, as well as your own experience. I often wonder about that saying: `Someone who is known to too many people will die without knowing themselves'. And there is another quote: `Bad actors talk, about themselves, good actors never do'.

Happy Days has been very important. Describing Winnie as Everywoman, she sees the play as a dishevelled love story and notes that for all its tragedy it is also very funny - "it's like life".

She is a serious woman, witty and responsive, at times anxious - "I know that I am anxious and volatile". A conversation with her moves from serious to comic to serious, and her funny stories usually have a point. She says raising her four children has been her biggest success, and remarks: "They've all left home now". Just when you feel like sympathising, she bounces back with: "I'm delighted".

Her moods swing: she can be practical and dreamy, slightly deadpan, then formal, almost worried and quickly returns to high humour with some subversive one liner.

No matter how happy she seems, Rosaleen Linehan is driven. She would like to do more film work and knows there are other stage roles she would like to play: "I'd love to do Long Day's Journey Into Night and Medea, Mother Courage Above all, would like to play Juno before I die but may have left, it too late.