Cork actor Stephen O'Leary: ‘I feel proud to be in this industry’

The current Oscars buzz makes it an ideal time for Cork-born Fair City actor Stephen O’Leary to star in Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen. Esther McCarthy learns about the path he took to centrestage

Sat, 11 Mar, 2023 - 00:00

Esther N McCarthy

With nine Oscar nominations for his movie, The Banshees of Inisherin among a record-breaking 14 Irish nominees at this year’s Academy Awards, writer-director Martin McDonagh is the movie man of the moment.

But McDonagh’s extraordinary success was honed and cultivated through his award-winning plays and now a Cork actor is about to perform the storyteller’s work live on stage.

Stephen O’Leary is preparing to tread the boards for the Irish premiere of Hangmen, McDonagh’s period tale of the second-best hangman in England, who finds himself at a crossroads when hanging is abolished under English law.

For Stephen, it’s the latest step up in a professional career that he first began to dream of when performing a McDonagh play in Fermoy as a young man.

“When I was younger, there was a production of The Cripple of Inishmaan at home in Fermoy,” said the 28-year-old of performing McDonagh in his teens. “I got the part of Billy and that was my first introduction to actual scene work and play work. I had been doing drama classes previous to that, but that was the first time I got to sit down with a play and study a character. The first time where I said to myself: ‘Maybe this is something that I could pursue’.”

From that first big amateur on-stage experience, the Rathcormac man has loved the mischievous allure of McDonagh’s work and feels fortunate to perform Hangmen on Dublin’s Gaiety stage for the next month, where Stephen plays a Londoner accused of murder in the pitch-black comedy.

“It’s set in the 1960s. It’s predominantly set in Oldham just outside Manchester in 1965,” explains Stephen. “It’s the day that hanging has just been abolished in the UK as a capital punishment. We see the character, Harry Wade, who was working as a hangman his whole life. I play a character called Hennessy who has been accused of murder at the beginning of the play. There’s a great fast-paced spark to the play. Harry, who’s being played by Denis Conway, goes through an identity crisis after hanging is abolished as that’s who he was known as.”

Stephen O'Leary: "Even after I did my Leaving Cert ... I don’t know if it was a confidence thing back then, or did I really believe I could make a career out of it."

As an actor and a fan of McDonagh’s work, what does he feel is it about the playwright and filmmaker that makes him stand out on stage and screen?

“You’re torn in different ways. You’re torn towards what you should be thinking from one scene to the next. There are loads of other themes he studies beautifully, like loneliness and people that are living in areas that don’t have much going for them. Identity and sense of place and all these kinds of themes that he just does wonderfully. The one thing about McDonagh is I feel there’s so much truth coming off the page in terms of what you see and what you feel, but he just mixes it with such heightened characters.”

MAKING A GO OF IT

As a boy growing up in North Cork, Stephen’s passion for drama was fostered by his mother, Valerie, whose work as a drama teacher spans decades.

She has been teaching with Monfort College of Performing Arts for more than three decades, first in Cork City and in more recent years, bringing classes to Fermoy. It was here where Stephen first discovered his passion for drama as did his siblings Sally and Claire, both of whom also work as professional actors.

“My younger sister, Claire, left school in transition year to go to London, said Stephen. “She got into musical theatre college and studied maths and English while she was studying musical theatre.

“Claire just came off a run of Les Miserables after two years. Sally was recently cast in a BBC series called Breeders with Martin Freeman. Sally is a writer too.”

Yet despite his love for drama, he was initially reluctant to pursue it as a career and it was Sally who encouraged him to go for it.

“I don’t think it ever occurred to me back then, even though I was really enjoying it, that I was going to carry on doing it after school. I suppose it was the performance of The Cripple that I first went to myself: ‘Jesus, I’ve loved working on that character and working on these scenes’. Even after I did my Leaving Cert ... I don’t know if it was a confidence thing back then, or did I really believe I could make a career out of it. It was my older sister, Sally, who was training in London at the time, who said to me: ‘Why don’t you audition for a couple of schools? Sally got the train with me from Cork to Dublin. We auditioned for the Gaiety and Patrick Sutton [the Gaiety School of Acting’s director] actually gave me a call that day to say they’d love to offer me a place.”

In recent years his career has gathered momentum, with a leading role onstage in Copper Face Jacks: The Musical. But of course it’s his role as the mischievous Zak Dillon in Fair City, for whom trouble is never far away, that he has become best known.

“I’ve been in it for a year now and the training that I’ve got being on set every day ... I really do think it was the right thing for me at the right time. The confidence I got from being on set everyday on Fair City ... the physicality I got from the musicals that I’ve done ... I’ve been in the pantomime a few years in the Gaiety. Timing is everything, but I feel like it’s all led to this point where I can say I’m in a Martin McDonagh play.”

Stephen O'Leary, actor: "There is a great buzz on the ground at the moment. It’s amazing to see actors and young actors, like Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan, get nominated for all these awards."

Zak has, typically, been up to no good of late and, because he’s in their homes and on their TVs so regularly, viewers tend to playfully equate the bad boy with the actor who plays him.

“Everyone asks me when they meet me on the street: ‘Will you ever come good?’ He laughs. “It’s been a bit of a shock the last year to be honest with you! Especially down home in Cork, because they really relate with the character and they see you as the character. It’s hilarious. Whenever I’m not working in Dublin, I come home. My father has a haulage company in Cork. Whenever I’m not working up here or acting, I’d go down and I’d hop into a van for him and I’d do a few deliveries for him around Cork. People who watch Fair City just don’t understand how I could be driving a van after being on telly the night before!”

He will soon be seen on the big screen in The Promised Land, acclaimed British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom’s tale of the partition of Palestine and creation of the state of Israel.

Just like Hangmen, it gave him the opportunity to delve into the history of that time as research.

“It’s one of my favourite parts of the job really, getting a chance to learn about these time periods.”

THE BROADER PICTURE

Like many Irish people, he will be rooting for The Banshees of Inisherin as they compete for nine Oscars including Best Picture, Director and acting nods for Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan.

“I had a day off and I went to the cinema on my own. I absolutely adored it. I thought the performances were amazing. A very McDonagh-esque feel to it, just these characters going through that world and in those situations. You feel for all of them. It’s a gorgeous story, and so simple as well. That scene with Barry Keoghan at the end is heartbreaking, you’re so with the characters. Colin Farrell is a great actor to watch, the character and the charisma he brings to all his roles. Banshees, I thought, was a very different role for him.”

To work as an actor at the heart of the industry in such a ground-breaking time must be very exciting right now.

“There is a great buzz on the ground at the moment. It’s amazing to see actors and young actors, like Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan, get nominated for all these awards. I do feel quite proud to be in the industry in this country because there is a lot of amazing stuff happening. It’s great to see everyone do so well.”