Off script: Aidan O'Hare talks about his career, and the future

The Cork actor made his name in RTÉ hit, Dead Still. And he’s set for bigger and better in 2021, writes Pat Fitzpatrick

Aidan O’Hare got into acting at the suggestion of a friend. Picture: Moya Nolan

Aidan O’Hare had a good 2020. The Cork-born actor caught the eye with a few stellar TV appearances during the year, including a stand-out cameo in The Young Offenders and a starring role as Detective Frederick Regan in Dead Still.

He’s going to be even more front and centre in 2021, appearing in a thriller called Red Election, a docu-drama mini-series for the History channel called Titans, and there’s talk of another outing as Frederick Regan in the second series of Dead Still on RTÉ.

It’s not like O’Hare arrived from nowhere. He has an accomplished show-reel that stretches back to The Wind That Shakes the Barley, with appearances in Vikings, Dublin Murders, and Rebellion along the way, and an appearance opposite Natalie Portman in Jackie in 2016.

So where did it all begin? “I was working in the family business, a buddy of mine convinced me to go into the Granary to audition for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, it was part of the Dramat society in UCC. I got the lead role, McMurphy,” O’Hare tells me from the bedroom of his house in Dublin 4, via Zoom.

Why did his friend suggest he should give it a go? “There was always mimicking, improvising situations, being a messer. I’d be up in front of the class in school in Carrignavar doing an impression of the teacher, seconds before he’d walk in.

“I did a couple of plays in there with Dramat, I saw a cheap flier with the name of a drama school in Manchester, I just wrote off, they were having auditions in Dublin, they invited me over to Manchester, I ended up doing a degree in acting over there. It’s a fantastic city. There are five universities there, so everything is set at a student price, from the buses to the nightclubs, a pound in, a pound for two drinks, everything was cheap there.”

I’ve always wanted to know what they teach you in acting school, so I asked.

“The main thing I got out of it was learning to listen. People, when they’re doing a scene, are running their own internal dialogue in their head, and waiting for a cue line to say what they need to say. Drama school teaches you to react rather than just deliver, and that’s the key to a real performance.”

He also got some hard-nosed advice from a well-known actor. “The realities of being an actor were drummed into us at an early stage in drama school. They got this guy David Threlfall, he plays Frank in Shameless, he was an ex-student, there were 90 of us in the room, he said in 10 years time there will probably only be four of us still doing it. He was established then, doing well for himself. He said the rest of us should just pack it in now, stop wasting your own time and your parent’ time and your own expectations because it is a tough, tough struggle to actually making a living.”

This prepared him for his early days. “Going down to London after I graduated, that did prove to be true. When you go out in the real world, people find there are only so many Pedigree Chum ads you can go to. It’s not about being in Romeo and Juliet or a Ken Loach movie, you have to take the hard knocks as much as the good ones. The reality is you spend a lot of time working in restaurants and bars.”

He got to do plenty of acting as well. “I loved London, got a great job with Max Stafford-Clark in the Royal Court, a play called Duck, was in that for a long time. We toured that for ages, but it was sporadic work. I always felt that I had lots of new beginnings in London, but really my career didn’t take off until I came home after about seven years.

“I was living in London when The Wind That Shakes the Barley happened. And I came home for good not long after that. I was doing The Tempest with Corcadorca at the time, when the movie came out I was enjoying being home so much, it was a catalyst for bringing me home. I started doing loads of theatre at home then.”

Aidan O'Hare with Michael Smiley in Dead Still.

I’ve talked to a few people who were in The Wind That Shakes the Barley, they all remarked on the camaraderie on location. Did he experience it? “Acting is really a team sport. On The Wind that Shakes the Barley, there were lots of non-acting people in it, there were guys who were picked up for their look, plumbers and electricians. All the pompousness of acting disappeared, it felt like we were a football team, it was great craic, there were catchphrases being born every day.”

O’Hare made me laugh out loud when he appeared in The Young Offenders as an accomplice of Billy Murphy, played by Shane Casey, who he has known since their time on The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

His performance was real and raw - I asked if they had wandered off-script. “There was a script, yeah, but the director gives you scope to improvise, you can throw in a few ad-libs here and there. I think all the stuff on the phone was made up. All the stuff would come to ya if there’s a camera stuck in your face and no better man than Shane Casey for doing that, he’s brilliant at it.” 

O’Hare’s biggest movie role to date was playing special advisor to JFK, Kenny O’Donnell, in the movie Jackie. I asked did it help that he has a big Irish head upon him? “Ya, it did! You know it happened out of the blue, within three weeks of the audition I was in Paris rehearsing with the director and Natalie Portman.”

That movie saw him shooting in Paris and Baltimore. How did that work out? “On an Irish set, you’re in for 8am, break at 1, work until 6. In France, you get into costume, have lunch at 11 o’clock and work until 8 o’clock. But on Jackie, at 11 in the morning, with the French crew, the wine would be flowing. But when it went to America, there was no wine, and a lot of them were a French crew, and they said ‘we’re not working until we get our wine.’ So they did, it was just a glass.”

What did he make of Natalie Portman? “We hardly spoke for a while. She had two massive bodyguards with her everywhere and they were outside the make-up room. Even when I’m doing the scene, there’s a guy just off-camera, they’d make a triangle around the room, protecting her at all time. After a while, we’d get to chatting, she told me she’d been to Cork and Dublin and she’d toured Ireland.”

After he finished on Jackie, he ended up back working in his Dad’s shop, serving film-maker Jim Sheridan. Is that just the reality when you’re acting. “It can be ya. It can be sporadic work.” It’s less sporadic now with all the TV and movie work – will he find time to do theatre?

“I used to do nothing but theatre - but there is another major project. “My wife Karen and I have a baby due in February. We already have a two-year-old - that’s why I stopped doing theatre, there was lots of touring, and I was away a lot.”

2021 is going to be extra busy for Aidan O’Hare. Jim Sheridan might have to find someone else to help with his messages.