This much I know: Carrie Crowley, Actor
When I was young I hadn’t a clue what I wanted to do or be. I never really looked that far ahead and I’m still a bit like that. I don’t really want to know where I’ll be this time next year or what I’ll be doing.
I was an outgoing child. I’d talk to anyone who’d engage with me. I was a total tomboy.
Music and stage were always a very strong part of our world. My father loved to sing so even if we were just washing up we’d end up harmonising some tune or other. And we went to see everything that ever played the Theatre Royal — regardless of genre — so it was never an ‘out there’ sort of thing but a very close, very familiar world.
After leaving school, I went to St Pat’s in Drumcondra to do a B.Ed. I’d blame that decision on my total lack of focus as to what I might like to do with my life.
When I was with the band Miss Brown To You we would often do a few numbers on local radio — WLRfm — and one day programme controller Billy McCarthy asked me if I’d like to try doing a show sometime. As soon as I sat in a studio I loved it.
The best advice I got was from my mother ‘What’s for you won’t pass you… and if it doesn’t happen it’s for a reason’. It has always meant that even with gigs I’d hoped to get I’m able to leave them go as soon as I hear they’re not mine. She also told us there was no reason to try to be like everybody else. And even when I made what might have seemed like ridiculous ‘career’ decisions... giving up teaching with nothing definite lined up, giving up a great job in local radio to work in a pre-school drama on RTÉ that was only going to be a few months work, once she was sure I’d thought it through it was never a problem.
I never consciously thought about acting full time until both my parents died in the space of a year. That made me reassess a lot of things. One of the big questions was what I’d regret not having tried if I were to become incapacitated or die. I realised acting was the thing that had always been a part of my life that I hadn’t actually taken a proper shot at so I decided to give it a go. I’m fascinated with how different we all are as people — be it nature or nurture that defines those differences — so taking on the life of somebody else, real or imagined, is always a pretty compelling experience.
I can be a stubborn mule sometimes. If I think I’m right about something I’ll argue the toss repeatedly until I see the light. Or the other person does.
My mother was an independent spirit and she definitely passed that on to my sister and myself. She’d hitch-hiked around Europe in the early 50s so as children we rarely drove a road without picking somebody up. I have memories of being squashed into the back of the car with big strong Germans and their massive rucksacks and our dog Patch and herself and Dad having the chats with them.
My idea of misery is closed tight spaces. Excessive noise. Bad comedy.
If I could be reborn as someone else for a day I’d like to be a seagull. To swoop and dive over the sea and perch on a stony cliff in the breeze would be a form of heaven.
I admire people who can ride on despite everything falling down around them. People who could sit and moan but refuse to. Like the people who despite the rising water in their homes during the floods managed to pull together as a community and even have a laugh about it. That can’t have been easy but they did it.
I believe the energy and spirit of the individual has to continue after we die. It’s too strong to dissipate. And I know I feel the essence of people who have died around me still so I have hopes for a continuation of sorts. But not as we are. And not necessarily in a ‘heavenly’ domain. Rather an altered state and space. So far, life has taught me that it’s for living.
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