A giant step from the streets to the gates of Bologna

GLENN GANNON’S latest role has him dressed as a French nobleman, one of a group solemnly handing over the keys to Bologna to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in the final series of The Tudors. It is a long, long way from the time he lived on the streets of Dublin, drinking himself into oblivion.

The 57-year-old actor, who still works on behalf of the Simon Community, once weighed just six-and-a-half stone and collapsed three times in a week through malnutrition and alcohol intake.

“I saw my reflection in a shop window one time and I was this old man with a beard and a bag,” he says. “I didn’t recognise myself.”

A former businessman in Dublin, Glenn was experiencing various life troubles when his father died on St Patrick’s Day, 1998.

“I went on a bender that didn’t end,” he says. “It ended my business, my marriage and my life in general at that point.”

He drifted from couch to couch at friends’ houses until he ended up homeless. It took various interventions from the likes of the St Vincent De Paul and Simon to drag him out of his despondency, so much so that, when his mother died while he was attending a therapy and rehabilitation course, it made him even more determined to turn his life around.

“I started in drama school back when I was with the Simon Community first in 2002,” he says. “One thing led to another and that Christmas I was offered the lead role in a play at Andrew’s Lane Theatre.”

A former resident of the Goldenbridge Industrial School, he was encouraged to attend the drama class by Christine Buckley of the Aislinn Centre.

Since then the roles have racked up, including the lead in a low budget film, Danny, directed by a BAFTA-nominated director and looking at the life of a homeless man. He also acted in Dorothy Mills, which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, and wrote his own script based on his time on the streets.

Speaking at the start of Simon Week, he believes now is the time for more state funding for homeless services.

Referring to “the guy on the ground”, he says: “Maybe they are not all scumbags. Maybe we don’t all want to live on the streets. If you have a chance you can scale the heights – you can do things.”