Clelia Murphy: 'There was nothing I wanted to study other than drama'

This Much I Know: 'The greatest challenge is trying to quiet down that voice in my head that says I can’t do something - I hear it every time I step onto a stage'

'My proudest achievement is my daughter Clarabelle."

I grew up in Castleknock right beside the Phoenix Park, so it was like having a huge back garden to play in. When I was a little thing cows used to graze there. I used to say “moo” to them whenever I would cycle past until one day one of them was offended by whatever I said and charged at me full tilt. I had to cycle as fast as my little legs could. My little blue bird bike and I barely escaped. In 1979, I was also literally the only child in Castleknock that wasn’t allowed to go to the pope’s visit. My mother was having none of it.

My other earliest memory is my sister being born and the day she came home from hospital. My mother arrived with a packet of strawberry Hubba Bubba bubblegum for me. It was something I was never allowed to have but I must have scourged my mother for it for her entire pregnancy. I chewed on that gum for weeks. It was genius parenting really. My mother had utter silence from her older child because my face was too sore to talk or complain or demand anything. I was too busy chewing to ask questions or throw any tantrums.

I think that I was 100 percent born to be in my line of work, though I didn’t realise it until I had to face down the CAO forms. There was nothing I wanted to study other than drama. I had always had acting and drama classes in my life as a child but I was the quiet one, not the obvious performer. So I genuinely didn’t consider it until I sat down with those forms and realised there was nothing else I was suited to.

Clelia Murphy on set for Fair City,

The greatest challenge I have ever faced is trying to quiet down that voice in my head that says I can’t do something. I hear it every time I step onto a stage, heard it every time I tried a new dance out on Dancing With The Stars. Any time that I’m in any way out of my comfort zone it pops up.

I think most of us share a semblance of that voice in our heads - and when it speaks, it thinks that somehow it’s helping you. Where in dangerous situations that is true, in other situations that may appear scary, not facing down that fear is in fact disabling you. For example, it may just be a room of peers that for whatever reason may be intimidating and you don’t want to walk into that room. But until you open that door and walk into that room you’re only dealing with the ‘what ifs’ and not the reality of the situation.

By not walking in, you don’t know what great things may come of being in that room. So what if you walk in and have a bit of a wobble and have to walk out again? Life is one big wibbly wobbly wonder. And it’s okay to wobble and, even better, to learn to like the wobble and indeed learn how to steady it and yourself. It’s how we learned as babies to stand up and walk. Always keep it simple, and always just be you.

My proudest achievement is my daughter, Clarabelle Murphy. Though in fairness, she is her own proudest achievement. Being a single parent and dealing with everything that comes with it has been the hardest but most rewarding thing I will ever face. And Clarabelle is the proof that, together, we did a good job of it.

Clelia and Clarabelle Murphy.

Work-wise, my proudest achievement was being in Claudia Carroll’s first play ‘Secrets of Primrose Square’, which she wrote during a pandemic without once mentioning the aforementioned pandemic. We tried three times to stage it and, third time lucky, it steamed ahead last month. Claudia is my dearest friend and the person I turn to most. She has the patience and understanding of a saint. She also has more right answers than Google.

My greatest quality is loyalty, but it is also my greatest frailty. What I’d like to be remembered for, however, is making the perfect poached egg.

The lesson I would like to pass on would be to never compare yourself to others. We’re all different and, ultimately, that’s what makes us the same. The greatest advice I have ever been given is that there is nothing you can’t handle. You will find the answer. Just give yourself the space and time to find it.

The thing that surprises me the most are people because just when you think you have someone understood or figured out they can simply take your breath away, in a good or bad way depending on the situation.

I’m scared of laziness because if left to my own devices I could easily waste my time watching TikTok. I’m a big procrastinator. I’m best at cleaning to procrastinate. I love the smell of bleach.

I wouldn’t have wanted to take a different fork in the road. If I did, I think I’d feel lost. It would have taken me some place else and that would be somewhere I wouldn’t want to be.