Robert Sheehan: 'West Cork feels like a return to my real home'
and in .
In recent years - and when he’s not travelling the world to work on shows like Misfits and The Umbrella Academy - actor has solidified his roots in .
The county has become his Irish base and there’s a sense, he says, of bringing it all back home. Though the young Sheehan was raised in - another county of which he has fond memories - his family roots were ensconced in and Kerry.
“It feels like, for me, a return to my real home,” he says. “I was raised in , but my mother's from , and all her family and my family are mostly still down there, dotted around the coast. I moved further west than them, they're from towards the city. My mother was born and reared outside Clonakilty. And then my father's from . He's from the middle mountains, the MacGillicuddy’s reeks of Kerry. Even when I was a small kid, when we'd go down, it felt much more like home, because you're surrounded by all your extended family.”
It was his parents - and a lively arts scene in , where the family lived as part of his now-retired dad’s work as a Garda - which first fostered his love for acting. “My mother and father were hugely, hugely encouraging.”
The teenage Sheehan landed his first major role in ’s powerful 2003 tale of a teacher who stands up against violent discipline at a Catholic school.
He remembers how his parents would run him up and down the country for auditions, and is glad of their support in his early interest. “There was never a word of: ‘don't you think you should do something else?’ Never. And it's years later you realise how lucky you were, because I've met other people whose parents couldn't see it. I mean, in a way that cautiousness is right, but not to the point of restricting a kid who has a natural proclivity towards it.”
The young Sheehan had long since fallen in love with performing on stage, aided and abetted by his schoolteachers and a lively arts scene in . “My teachers were really encouraging and lovely. One of them took the play and rewrote it for a audience!” he laughs.
Portlaoise’s well-known Dunamaise arts and theatre centre also helped drive his interest. “There's a fair bit of community, and a fair few people around who get great craic out of rehearsing and putting on plays, pantos for the town.
“There was a fantastic theatre production company that's quite nearby in a village called Shanahoe, which is not really a village, more like a bend in the road. It was a church and a function hall, and they'd be doing plays. We had a great national school, where we were putting on plays. And so there was a fair bit of that around. I was like a moth to the flame. I wanted to explore that and be on stage and be putting costumes on and doing all that stuff when I was a kid.”
Sheehan went on to star as Darren in crime drama which became a massive hit and fired the already growing careers of cast including , , , and a young actor by the name of . Like many of his co-stars, now enjoying sustained success in and internationally, Sheehan hasn’t looked back, breaking out in the first couple of series of hit British TV series Misfits, starring in smash based on the comic-book series of the same name, and, more recently, taking to the stage in productions of and
This week he returns to our screens in director Bassett’s lively sword and sorcery tale of a tough barbarian () and based on the hit comic series. Enslaved by a nasty tyrant who wants to destroy her people, she faces off against the villainous Draygan and his bride. Sheehan is having a blast as the villain of the story.
“There was a pleasing amount of monologuing from the villain,” recalls Sheehan of reading the screenplay. “I thought: ‘Oh yeah!’ I could really get in and wallow around in that and explore it.
“I thought it was a meaty part. You could do loads with it. He's this kind of technocratic lunatic, very anti environment, very pro industry. I thought that'd be an interesting thing to lean into and try to find compassion for. Plus the fact that it's a Marvel comic book - that attracted me definitely. The fact that it's a Marvel character, Marvel movie, going back 50 years. This is not part of the Disney Marvel, gigantic empire, but still, that definitely intrigued me.”
He was also drawn to the idea that filmmaker Bassett wanted to make something with a message through a commercial beat. “I thought that's really brilliant, the director from the get-go making a swords and sorcery movie. She wants to make something that's commercially impactful with overtones of an environmental message. It's not raw and rammed down people's throats, alienating them. It's wrapped up in an entertaining story. I think this movie does that really beautifully, because is an environmental activist. used to present nature TV on the .”
Italian actress builds on her memorable role in Coralie Fargeat’s much-talked-about thriller Revenge. Fargeat went on to direct the Oscar-nominated and too, feels like a star in the making.
“There's a brilliant savagery, I think she brings,” says Sheehan. “The temper is ready to be lost. Her Sonja is really connected to, not ashamed of, primal emotions, anger and rage. Then at the same time, this really bright, sunny softness. There's such a lovely spectrum between those two places that she can go back and forth. I watched the movie which Matilda stars in by , an incredible film, really unique.”
is a pretty visceral film that is graphic in its battle scenes. Actors often prepare in advance for such stunt-heavy scenes. Was there a boot camp in which everyone learned to safely lob the heads off each other?
“There was a lobbing the heads off each other boot camp!” laughs Sheehan. “Mercifully, I was not involved. My character, very pointedly, can't fight. But I did get to, in fairness, retrain on the horse-riding front. We had this fantastic, mostly Spanish horse team and these magnificently beautiful horses that we got to go and train on. I did a fair whack of horse training, which was really wonderful.”
- is now available on Digital HD platforms including Sky Store and Apple TV, and on DVD and Blu-ray from September 8
