This much I know: Kate Brennan

I think my dad hoped I’d follow an academic path, but the stage was in my blood.

The fact that my parents are well-known actors, my father is Stephen Brennan and my mother is Martina Stanley, certainly influenced me. I’d watch them on stage, or on the television, and very much looked up to them and wanted to be like them. I thought they were very glamorous, and loved to see them getting dressed up to go out at night.

They were an inspiration and I could learn the business from them, but I don’t think having actor parents particularly helped my career. Quite the opposite in fact — it ruled out auditioning for a lot of parts where my father was the romantic lead!

My earliest memory of acting was being one of the three kings in a nativity play when I was five years old. I was raging that I didn’t get to play Mary.

I was never really conscious of having to live up to the family name. If I had been a really awful actor maybe that could have been a different story.

My sister Sarah is an actor and writes and produces, my little brother Johnny used to act as a child but he’s into music now, and my sister Holly is a graphic designer.

After school I started doing drama and theatre studies, but I left after two years as it was too academic — I wanted to be on stage. I took a year out in New York where I got a lot of things out of my system.

I did a little bit of acting as a child, but I was 20 before I did my first professional gig, in a Scottish play, which gave me a lot of confidence.

Stage will always be my first love. I love the buzz of it, the instant gratification you get from performing live.

I was so used to being on stage that I was terrified when I did my first film. With plays, at least in theory, you get four to five weeks to prepare and you know exactly what you are going to be doing on stage each night and you get plenty of time to get ‘into the zone’ of your character. But, on film, you have to hit it straight away and you only get a few takes to get it right. If you don’t, you can’t go back.

If I wasn’t an actor I’d love to sing. I still have a secret desire to become a rock star.

My worst habit is smoking. And I’m very indecisive. I need to learn to trust my gut instincts more.

Success means different things to different people, doesn’t it? Certainly appearing in an Abbey production of The Plough and the Stars would have been on the list.

The best advice I could give to anyone who wants to act is to stay true to yourself.

I plan to stay in Ireland, although having said that I’m over and back to London a lot at the moment.

I do find it hard to divide my time between work and play. The two often overlap in this business. I’m a kind of all or nothing girl. I’m very career focussed. I don’t have a boyfriend right now. I find that boyfriends tend to take up a lot of time.

I am a creature of change. I actually love the insecurity and unpredictability of acting. I couldn’t imagine staying in the one job for rest of my life.

Of course every actor goes through moments of panic about work drying up. But I trust that something will always come along.

Kate Brennan is appearing in Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars at the O’Reilly Theatre until Sept 15, before going on tour around the country.