Award-winning Irish actor of stage and screen Domhnall (pronounced Donal) Gleeson has followed in his famous father’s footsteps. Born in Dublin, he is the son of Brendan Gleeson but has begun to forge his own identity. He had roles in “About Time” (2013), “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” (2011) and “Unbroken” (2014). The 31-year-old stars alongside Oscar Isaac and Alicia Vikander in the sci-fi dramatic thriller “Ex Machina,” directed by Alex Garland in theaters now. He has also been cast in “Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens,” coming out later this year.
I want to see a sequel to this movie.
[Laughs] That might be difficult. You might have lost a couple of your cast there. But, yeah, it’s a good movie. It’s nice to see what Alex [Garland] describes as adult drama, which I always thought was pornography. But it’s nice to see proper drama for grown-ups.
Did the movie have you questioning your own beliefs about what God is, what life is?
Well, I don’t believe in God. I’m an atheist. So that wasn’t brought into question.
Alicia [Vikander] talked — when we were doing press together — about how she’d read up on human emotions rather than read about machines. I mean, of course, the body is just an organic machine. Everything has its job to do, and if one of those things break down, you get sick and you either mend it or you can’t. Emotions are no different. They are still instincts and chemical reactions which are built in a brain.
In a lot of ways, if you get to the level of science and computing that you get to in “Ex Machina” and you build something that is sentient, in a way there will be no difference between that and the human. Except for that fact that perhaps they will be able to live forever and we will not. I did find it very interesting, and it did question how you feel about the notion of a soul. That is fascinating and something that I would like to believe, but I’m just not sure that I do.
Did it take you long to get established as a working actor? It wasn't your first plan from what I understand.
Well, you are talking about plans made when you’re a teenager. Very few people end up doing what their plans were when they were a teenager. My idea was to see if I’d be any good as a writer or director in film. That had been my initial plan in college. When I was 19, I read a play that was casting in London, and it was so alive on the page. I thought, you know what? I would actually love to bring that to life. So I auditioned for it and got it. That’s how I became an actor.
You just kept acting after that.
I didn’t do any work really all the time that I was at college. I had a couple of very small parts in things and then when I left college there was like a nine-month gap when I was 23 or 24 when I just got no work and no auditions. That’s a long time to be out of work. I didn’t love that.
Nine months, I guess it’s relative.
Yeah, it’s different for everybody.
How do you judge your own success and your own abilities? Is it the nominations or the awards or the accolades or is it some gut feeling?
I think it’s personal taste. I’ve got certain people I trust. My dad, my brother [also an actor] and actor friends in the business. They are the sort of people who will tell you, “You know what? It was OK. It wasn’t great.” I would trust those people more than I would trust other things.
I read reviews for films all the time that I totally disagree with — films that are supposed to be the best films of the year that I couldn’t be more bored sitting through. And then having the best time ever at a movie I’ve been told is a piece of crap. You know? I see people nominated for things all the time that doesn’t have any inherent value for me, but it obviously does for other people.
If you look to other people to tell you too much, you will be wrong. The people whose taste I share, if you get a compliment from somebody like that, for me is a good thing. The notion that Alex would want to work with me is a much bigger reward than getting a nomination for something.
What about the basic mechanics of your career — memorizing lines? Was that easy for you?
It depends on the job. It depends on what you have to say. If it’s a conversation that totally makes sense or where the logic of the line is easy to follow ... those lines are much easier to remember than a speech with medical mumbo-jumbo all the way through it. That happens sometimes. You will get thrown a piece of paper with a bunch of stuff on it where the words don’t connect in a way that makes sense to you. Those are difficult. You are learning letters and words and not meaning. Good writing is usually easy to remember.
Do you pace around repeating lines?
I do, I do. I pace around a lot. I have a dialect coach, who is great. Just by working on dialect with her, I can learn a certain amount.
What about criticism? As an actor you are more exposed than the average person. Did you develop a thick skin or did seeing how your father dealt with it prepare you?
Um, well, my dad hasn't received much negative criticism in his career at all. Even when he sometimes wasn’t in the best movies, he came out of them well and then was always able to step up when the quality of the writing got better or it was a particularly brilliant job. So, yeah, you read the odd review which was sniffy and you would want to break the critic’s neck because it’s your father that they are talking about. But actually there were so few of those that you have to search pretty hard to find bad reviews of my father.
Luckily for me, it is a lot easier to find them. [Laughs] You can just Google my name and you will find them. That sort of stuff is never nice to read. You want people to like it and the risk you take is that they won’t. I mean, I’ve got stuff I’m proud of that didn’t get the best reaction and stuff that got better reactions that I’m not that proud of. So it is about remembering what is important to you.
Being an actor you get recognized. What is that like for you?
It is odd. There is no getting around that. There is a discrepancy in your realities. There are more people who know who you are than people who you know who they are. That’s strange, but it’s not a a level where I can’t walk down the street.
It’s at a level where maybe once or twice if I’m out somebody might say, “Hey are you that guy?” I either say yes or no. That’s easy. I do have friends you see out and about and things are difficult for them. That is odd and I don’t envy them that. That is not something I would aspire to, you know.
When you get really into character, do you find you think or dream in that new persona?
Yeah, inevitably I think it does happen. I imagine my heart rate was a little quicker when we were doing “Ex Machina.” I was probably a little more stressed out than generally. On that film I didn’t enjoy my time away from camera as much as I sometimes do when I’m free.
On [the movie] “About Time,” I came home beaming from work every day and was pretty happy with my life and enjoying every moment. So, yeah, your moods can fluctuate depending.
I played an IRA guy in a thing about three years ago, and I was sharing an apartment with a friend of mine. He came into my room one night to tell me somebody had broken into the apartment, and I woke up with a Northern Irish accent, so I guess I must have been dreaming in some sort of character. It does happen. It does bleed in. I think if anybody has a bad day at work it stays with them. Or if they have a very good day at work it affects the rest of the day. So in that way acting isn’t any different.
Except you are being someone else.
Everybody is a little bit someone else when they are at work, right? Your boss tells you to do something and you want to tell him to shove it. You don’t say it. You become the person who doesn’t say that. You mold into the situation, I guess.
Patricia Sheridan: psheridan@post-gazette.com, 412-263-2613 or follow her on Twitter at @pasheridan.
First Published: April 27, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
