This much I know: Mary McEvoy, Actor

I like being the captain of my own soul. I don’t like being told what to do.

At the moment I’m rehearsing for John B Keane’s The Matchmaker — and lambing.

Home is a farm in Westmeath. I’ve always been sheep farming, but like everyone else in show business the last couple of years have been difficult, so I spent more time at it. But this year is turning out to be an embarrassment of riches.

I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to my sheep. And generally I like to know what’s happening, I like things copperfastened. I don’t like loose arrangements. I try to go with the flow but with my work I have to slot a lot of different things into different times, so I need to know what I’m doing and when I’m doing it.

I worked in the Department of Agriculture donkeys years ago, it was the first job I was offered. I’m an unrepentant hippy and there was a group of us working there, on our way to doing something else. It was a strange little oasis of hippies on a working farm in Beaumont. We’d sit out in the hay shed and sing Incredible String Band songs. It was great fun.

I left to become a music journalist but ended up living with a musician instead. Garvan and myself are still together 26 years later.

If I could change one thing in our society, I’d change the human ego. We think we are the masters of the planet but we are just messing it up.

There weren’t any full-time acting schools back then so I did a part-time weekend course in the Oscar Theatre School. The third audition I ever did was for Glenroe. I got it and the rest is history. I played Biddy for 16 years.

Deciding to leave Glenroe wasn’t easy as it was walking away from a whole way of life and social structure. But I didn’t want to wake up in later life and say I wonder what would have happened if I’d left?

Irish attitudes towards mental health are getting a lot better but we still have a long way to go.

My biggest challenge has been dealing with depression. I began when my father started to get ill. I was an only child and he was a real huge figure in my life. He was 92 when he died but even then he was a giant of a person. It was the first time I realised I was powerless over something.

After he died the feelings of sadness and depression continued. I was crying all the time. I told a friend who also suffers from depression and she was the one who said ‘you realise that’s not normal’. I went to see a psychiatrist who diagnosed me and said he didn’t know how I’d kept going for so long. The diagnosis helped me as before that I thought it was a weakness, not an illness. I was put on medication, which I still take, but I find exercise like yoga and running really helps.

I’m interested in why I’m here on the planet. I like to get to the depth and the meaning of things. When you think like that you are prone to dark moods as you are delving all the time.

I used to pray very strongly as a Catholic but I was always at war with things in the church — the lack of women’s voices, the sexual morality thing — and I also couldn’t not believe in reincarnation.

I practice Buddhism although I question it too. I don’t accept everything I hear.

The most freeing thing I’ve discovered is that I am responsible for my own life.

In the long run we are all just these beings trundling along as best we can. We all get sick, we all die and we all come back again. That’s Buddhism.

John B Keane’s The Matchmaker, starring Mary McEvoy and Jon Kenny is at The Everyman, Cork from Monday, April 7, to Saturday, April 12, at 8pm nightly. Tickets €22, concession €18, opening night €15, students €9 (Monday to Wednesday).

Book online at www.everymancork.com or box office 021-4501673.