Clare Dunne: ‘I was suddenly famous one weekend — it took me a while to adapt'

She’s summoned the darkest depths of womanhood, but Clare Dunne says she’s much more at home making audiences laugh, writes Mary Cate Smith

Clare Dunne: “I was suddenly famous one weekend in September 2021. I went from nothing to getting recognized in the shops.” Pics: David Doherty

Clare Dunne is one of those actors it can be hard to get a read on.

On-screen, she often portrays formidable women who walk an emotional tightrope and challenge audience expectations.

As Amanda in Kin, she rises in the ranks of the criminal underbelly of Dublin’s drug scene. We see flashes of kindness with her children, but that maternal instinct drives her to cold-blooded ruthlessness.

As Sandra in Herself, she comes from an abusive relationship and is homeless, but she creates opportunities for herself and physically builds a house from scratch to provide for her family.

Clare Dunne: “I probably am quite private but I think that’s quite normal.”

But who exactly, I wonder, is Clare Dunne? When we meet on Zoom, all I can see through the screen are white walls, and some framed photographs, just far enough out of view that I can’t make out who is in the frame.

“I don’t want people to know where I live,” she tells me. And, she continues, she doesn’t want to speak about anything personal.

As a journalist, it’s quite a discombobulating start to an interview. But, times are changing.

Around the time we speak, pop superstar Chappell Roan is in the news for setting a boundary with fans and media alike, expressing her desire to protect her private life despite her seemingly overnight ascension to the top of pop. 

Roan had been steadily building a career for the past ten years, but in the past few months, as that work has paid off in chart success and record festival attendees, fame has come too.

Her push-back against our insatiable hunger for more and more from those we make famous has revealed just how much the public expects from those we choose to put on a pedestal.

It’s something Dunne can relate to.

“People thought I rose up overnight but I’d been working solidly for 10 years,” she explains.

“I was suddenly famous one weekend in September 2021. I went from nothing to getting recognized in the shops.”

Clare Dunne: “I do find people come up and say hello to me in Ireland, or ask for a photo. Most of the time, it’s just really nice. They love Amanda and they want to have the craic.”

NOT NECESSARILY CRAIC

Up until that point, Dunne’s main work was theatre work with prestigious companies such as Druid, but her television role as Amanda in Kin shot her to a different level of fame.

“It was really, really quick. It took me a while to adapt,” she says.

“I probably am quite private but I think that’s quite normal,” she muses.

“I just couldn’t take the oppressive [nature] of exposing so much and also, it’s more about my respect to other people.”

But while she may be hesitant to share much with a journalist, she says she doesn’t mind chatting to people on the street who enjoy her work.

“I do find people come up and say hello to me in Ireland, or ask for a photo. Most of the time, it’s just really nice. They love Amanda and they want to have the craic.”

Craic isn’t necessarily a word that comes to mind when it comes to the roles Dunne is best known for, but it’s actually where the actor’s roots in acting began.

“It’s an honour to play those grief-stricken, determined, shadow roles but I actually started out doing very fringy stuff at first that was full of improvising and comedy and singing funny little songs that I wrote,” she shares. “That’s where my heart is as a performer.”

She hasn’t flexed that muscle in a while she admits, and she is itching to do so.

Clare Dunne: “We need comedy, don’t we?” she ponders, “Well I need it."

“I would love to do some funny material, make people laugh, do a bit of improv. It’s all about the connection to a live audience. That’s where I started.

“[Comedy] is the biggest buzz,” she says. “Better than a first kiss...

“Wait first kisses can be awful, can’t they?

“It’s better than when you suck tea up through a [Cadbury's] Twirl and put it in your mouth. It’s delicious.

“We need comedy, don’t we?” she ponders, “Well I need it. I can get really bored and low and comedy cops me on to how lucky I am to be alive at all and that being human is painful and ecstatic but you can choose one more over the other.”

Another side to the actor will emerge in her next film, Kathleen is Here..

The film stars fellow Irish actress Hazel Doupe as an orphan who has been in and out of the foster care system her entire life.

“She inherits the home that her mother had had when she was younger. So she’s suddenly on her own in the world at 18, but she develops a bit of a friendship to the next door neighbor that’s just moved in which is me”.

Without giving too much away, Dunne describes her preparation for the role as “deep and dark”, explaining how she often shied away from the rest of the cast to listen to music that would put her in the mood.

At 5’9, Clare is statuesque and strikingly beautiful, and her self belief matches her height. This is a woman who knows who she is and isn’t afraid to say no.

“When I started there was even resistance to me keeping my birthmark but sure now, it’s just not even a thing. I don’t say that as a ‘poor me’ thing. It is what it is.”

Clare Dunne in Pellador's '2002' jumper: “In Irish culture and in our history, we’re all trying to understand and heal from the time of Magdalene Laundries,” she says.

FAR FROM HOME

Exuding self-assurance and poise, I can’t imagine the 36-year-old ever feeling insecure about her career choices, but she has questioned herself on several occasions.

She was considering moving back in with her parents when the producers of Marvel movie Spiderman: Far From Home availability checked with her agent and within a few days, she was on set with Hollywood A-listers Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Samuel L Jackson.

“I was getting the odd film gig but I started screenwriting as my way of getting more involved in camera work.” 

Inspired by a friend’s real-life situation, Dunne wrote Herself, a feature film directed by Phyllida Lloyd about a woman escaping an abusive relationship who finds herself and her children homeless.

Getting Phyllida on board was a huge boost to Dunne and she fought hard to ensure the actress was cast in the main role.

“That made it harder for us to get funding. She said I’m going to direct it but I need you starring in it. I thank her and women like that around me. They had a much harder deal 20 or 30 years ago.

“There’s an interesting shift happening in how we work. It’s a certain leadership style. Women that I’m really inspired by, especially Phyllida — their method of working, how they run a set, how they speak to people — it doesn’t feel so competitive or hierarchical.”

Since Herself, Clare’s confidence in writing has grown, and she credits that supportive atmosphere of working with other women she admires. “I’m learning from her and from other women like that.”

Clare Dunne: ‘Yeah, we need this story now. We need to be reminded that we didn’t let it completely take us down.’

Growing up in Balinteer in south Dublin as one of six sisters, Dunne comes from a long line of creative women with a hunger for activism — her grand-aunt on her mother’s side worked as a theatre facilitator in Mountjoy Prison. (Touring an all-female version of a Shakespearean trilogy, Dunne co-facilitated workshops with Clean Break, a theatre company that works with incarcerated women to tell their stories as part of the criminal justice system. 

“Once you talk to these women, you realise how important it is to tell stories from different voices and perspectives,” she says).

It’s no doubt, therefore, she is particularly proud of her small role in the upcoming Small Things Like These with Cillian Murphy.

Based on Claire Keegan’s novella, it charts the story of Bill Furlong, a kind-hearted man who uncovers some hideous truths about the local Magdalene Laundry and vows to help a teenage girl in trouble.

“In Irish culture and in our history, we’re all trying to understand and heal from the time of Magdalene Laundries,” she says.

“This story is so heartfelt — there’s something in it that maybe speaks to the truer nature of us as Irish people, inside of all of that stuff that was going on in the church.

“There’s something about this story that shows the spark of truth that is deep inside Irish people, despite all that stuff that happened at the time — there [was this] kindness and instinctive connection to each other, that made me go; ‘Yeah, we need this story now. We need to be reminded that we didn’t let it completely take us down.’”