Éanna Hardwicke: 'Growing up in Cork I never understood why we didn’t film more here'
Cork actor Éanna Hardwicke Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
It is the morning after the Oscars and, like many of us, Éanna Hardwicke is proudly talking about Jessie Buckley’s history making best actress win. It’s notable, he says, that Irish — and Munster — talent has enjoyed so much success at cinema’s biggest stage in recent years.
“Imagine, in two of the last three years, a best actor winner from Cork, and the best actress winner from Kerry. It’s quite something.”
Having admired Buckley’s work for years, he was particularly delighted to see the Killarney woman become the first Irish actress to win best actress.
“I don’t know Jessie, but I’m an enormous fan of her work. From even the youngest age, she strikes me as someone who has such a grounded confidence to what she does. That comes, I think, from real, authentic, genuine love for what she does, and even the way she spoke during the Oscars, she’s a very special person.”
Buckley’s Oscar win is another highlight in Ireland’s much talked about ‘green wave’ of screen talent, and Hardwicke is finding his own successes in that growth.
The busy actor has had strong reviews for playing fellow Corkman Roy Keane in Saipan. He recently completed a run of John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World at London’s National Theatre opposite Nicola Coughlan and Siobhán McSweeney. Other recent credits include his award-winning turn in BBC’s true crime drama The Sixth Commandment.
He returns to our screens in , a crime thriller inspired by true events from Belfast in December 2004. It tells a fictional tale of two bank employees pulled into an audacious robbery.
Forced to orchestrate the £26.5m robbery to save their loved ones’ lives, they are expected to execute the crime without the gang ever stepping foot inside the bank. The film is based on the biggest heist in Irish and British history.
“I read it and thought this is just a cracking story, and brilliantly told by Aisling Corristine and Colin McIvor who co-wrote it (McIvor also directs). It’s based on the events of the Northern Bank robbery, and I think they use that as a backdrop to tell a very human story about how these two men deal with the pressure and the jeopardy of the situation, where they have to protect their families in this Tiger kidnapping situation. It was very much the human aspect of it that drew me to the story.”
Audiences are made very aware of the stakes facing these men early on as close family members are kidnapped.
Hardwicke’s character, Barry, has to dig deep to find a way through.
“He’s thrust into this pressure cooker of a situation, he has to find enormous levels of resolve and courage and fortitude, because his mother’s life is on the line. He’s got to take £26.5m out of the bank in broad daylight.
“That, for me, was the crux of the character — never really believing in yourself, because people have underestimated you and put you down. And now, in 24 hours, you’ve got to find some kind of mettle in you and some kind of stoicism to get through the situation.”
The story is also given an edge by the fact that the two bank workers don’t get along with each other and have very little in common.
“I think that was a central part of the dramatisation of the story,” says the actor. “It needed that frisson between the two characters. Richard (Eddie Marsan) and Barry (Hardwicke) are two very different men, they’ve led very different lives, and that has always brought them into conflict with each other. It also made it, I think, more poignant. Because they have to find the common ground. They have to find a common language.”
He loved, says Hardwicke, bringing that tricky dynamic to the screen with top English actor Marsan.
“I’ve learned so much from working with him. It was a real masterclass with him, and not just how he is as an actor, but how he conducts himself as well. He’s such a brilliant presence on set. We had a lot of fun doing this because he’s a very funny guy, and I think that creates an environment where everyone does their best work.”
The Cork actor has spent a lot of time in Belfast, a city he loves, in recent years and has many close friends living there. As well as researching the true events that inspired the film, he wanted to get a sense of time and place. In doing so, he read novels including Anna Burns’s and by Michael Magee.
“It was more about language, actually, communication. It was more about the feel of a place which I think fiction, in a weird way, gives you more than non-fiction, because I could do all the research I wanted, but that doesn’t necessarily give you the feel of a street or the feel of an era.”
Hardwicke grew up in Cork City before his family moved to Glanmire, and had an interest in drama from an early age. As a boy, he appeared opposite Ciarán Hinds in Irish feature film , filmed on location in Cobh.
Later, he attended top Irish drama school The Lir, going on to make an impression opposite Jesse Eisenberg in Lorcan Finnegan’s sci-fi thriller , and to play Connell’s friend Rob in the Irish international smash that was .
In the years since, Hardwicke’s career has gathered steady momentum — but it was his family and his home city, he says, that fostered the encouragement to pursue acting.
That began at home, where his mother, a career-guidance counsellor, encouraged him to do something that he loved.
“That’s exactly what she instilled and does, I think, for lots of students. That was her whole approach and philosophy, really. It’s just about finding something you love and letting that be the compass that takes you to whatever the job might be.
“She’s brilliant at what she does, and always encourages us to do that, which I’m incredibly grateful for because you need that. You need people around you to make it feel viable and also to embolden you to proceed, because it’s so hard, and you need that encouragement.”
He was reminded of that very point just the day before, as he proudly watched his nephew, James, take part in Cork’s annual music and drama festival, Feis Maitiú.
“I did Feis Maitiú when I was growing up, but I hadn’t been there since, and it was just brilliant to hear the encouragement, all the brilliant talent that was on show that day, and then the encouragement from their parents and the adjudicator.”
It’s such a vulnerable thing for young people, he says, to put yourself up on stage or on camera.
“And then to meet people who will say, ‘yeah, why wouldn’t you? Why shouldn’t you pursue that?’ It’s not to say that you don’t educate people on the challenges of it as well.
He’ll never forget, he says, how other people gave that encouragement to him. He mentions the Cork School of Music, and the teachers there, including Regina Crowley, Ann Barry, and Trina Scott. “The training we got there was outstanding. And when I look back at the last 10 years, I can see how that inspired me. It’s one of the reasons that I’m doing this today.”
In the months ahead, actor Adam Scott stars in the supernatural horror from Bantry filmmaker Damian McCarthy, filmed at West Cork Studios and on location in West Cork.
Screen Ireland is backing that film as well as .
While filmed in the county and at West Cork Studios, the film is set in New York in 1961, as the legendary jazz pianist forms his trio and records two albums — regarded as among the greatest in jazz — over the course of one night. Cork will also be ready for its close-up in the forthcoming . Vicky Wright’s drama stars Saoirse Monica Jackson and Stephen Rea. Does Hardwicke feel that Cork is having a moment, and why does he think this is happening now?
“It’s hard to point to one thing. It feels like a lot of work that’s been going on for many years, and then a lot of it is right place, right time. I saw Brendan Canty’s short film Christy years ago, because a friend had recommended it to me. I saw his first video for Hozier ( ), which was just beautiful and cinematic.
Then I saw his first short, which captured the spirit of Cork City and the northside unlike anyone has. Then to see the long process of that going into a feature film which, as always, takes many years. It’s about all of the people who help you along the way,” he adds.
“It’s about taking that seed of an idea, developing it, and nurturing it. I think he’s an amazing example of that. It’s no accident that it turned out so brilliantly and so rich.”
Hardwicke also feels the opening of West Cork Studios has been key.
“I was there for the turning of the sod about two and a half years ago. Two years later, they have made at least four films. Films set all over the world, including , which is set in California, and just won a huge prize at the Berlinale (film festival). I remember growing up in Cork feeling like there was a wonderful arts scene, but never understood why we didn’t film more here.
“ kickstarted that. Only now do we see the fruits of that labour. I think the only secret is that it’s been people plugging away for years.”
- No Ordinary Heist is in cinemas now.
