Keeping those Irish eyes smiling

Colm Meaney passes on the nice guy role and delves into fiddle music with Boys & Girl from County Clare

With one of Ireland's most recognizable faces, Colm Meaney has become as famous on these shores as he is at home. Playing O'Brien on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the dad in The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van, the 51-year-old actor has had his pick of the crop when it comes to Irish movie fare, and his taste has been impeccable.
His latest venture, John Irvin's The Boys & Girl From County Clare, sees Meaney as Jimmy McMahon and Bernard Hill as his brother, both fiddlers who haven't spoken in 20 years. They bring their Ceili bands to a music contest in a small Irish town in the early '70s to settle a grudge match. Hill's top fiddler (Andrea Corr) falls for one of Meaney's musicians. The love story unfolds amid Irish music, dancing, drinking and hilarious one-liners.
Tandem talked to Colm Meaney when he was in Toronto.

You worked with Andrea Corr in The Commitments, where you played her father. What was it like working with her again?
"I'm very proud of her-she's developed beautifully as an actress. She's such a great girl, I was trying to get her to be a bit of a bitch in this, pushing her to be a pop star. But she's such a sweet girl."

My understanding is John Irvin originally cast you in Bernard Hill's role, but you insisted on playing Jimmy.
"I felt like John Joe was the kind of thing that I'd done before. It was kind of a nice guy and I was intrigued by Jimmy, because I just felt he's so brash and shallow and an idiot in many ways, and I thought 'That's something I haven't really done.' And when we found Bernard to take my original part, I thought that was great. Obviously, with brothers you've got to match them. I've got three brothers, and I think relationships between siblings are very interesting and not examined very much in film."

The film is a celebration of Irish music, in particular Ceili bands. How would you explain the music to newcomers?
"It's a dance band. There are no vocals, ever. You have fiddle, accordion, flute, drums. And each tune they play is for a specific dance, and everyone knows all the steps. I wasn't into it when I was a kid, but I was aware of it. My dad was a big Ceili fan. But we were city boys, and the music was more popular in the country."

Did you play an instrument as a kid?
"No, not really. I played trombone for 10 minutes, and then I was in an accordion band in school for even less. Ceili music was our parents' and grandparents' music. But when I came to do this movie, I must say, the first time they put the playback on and the band started, I said 'This is great music.' It's infectious, and the dancing part of it is great, too. It's wonderful to dance to."

But you play the fiddle in the film. Was that you?
"No! The way I saw it, there's no way you're going to learn to play in such little time. So basically, I sat down with a player, a professional. I sat across from him, and he played, and I just followed. Bernard really wanted to learn the fiddle and I didn't. He would get a little angry at me, and I'd be like 'Well, you do your thing, and I'll do my thing.' So he'd be in his trailer next to mine all day playing, all day sawing along, and I'd be in mine relaxing. Then one day my girlfriend came to visit and she had all these classical music CDs. She put a violin concerto in my stereo and we turned it up very loud. A few minutes later Bernard burst into my trailer going, 'What the?' 'Who's that playing?' I told him it was me."

As a Star Trek character you're now part of one of the oddest cultural phenomena in history. How is that?
"It's almost like I'm two different actors. Most people in the business, in the feature film business-directors, producers-they don't even know I did Star Trek. Which is good, in a way, because the danger in doing something like Star Trek is that you end up in that pigeonhole and you're doing that the rest of your life. But as to the culture, I avoid those Star Trek conventions as much as I can. I didn't do them at all when I was doing the show. But I've done about four or five since. Talking about the show reminds you of things that you went through. So it's fun. When the show was on, I couldn't have handled it. I didn't want that direct connection."

Doing Star Trek for those many years could've ruined your movie career. But it didn't. How did you manage?
"You have to stand your ground. You don't want to be just playing one character for the rest of your life, and I told that to [producer] Rick Berman. And he said he would always get me out to do a feature I really wanted to do. And for seven years he was true to his word. It was amazing. They'd write me out of a couple of episodes or they'd maybe shoot two days back-to-back-the last day of one episode and the first day of another episode-which would cut me loose for two or three weeks. It was kind of a scheduling nightmare, but it was well worth doing. And I'll always be grateful to Rick for that, because for seven years he really made that work."

Where do you make your home these days?
"Mostly Los Angeles and Spain. Me and my girlfriend just had a baby girl, her name is Ada. She was born in Spain, her mother's French, and her father's Irish. We figured out that Ada works in Spanish, French and English. But I go to Ireland three or four times a year at least."

I'm of Italian origin, and one of my favourite scenes was in The Van. Ireland had just lost to Italy in the World Cup and your character was wearing a t-shirt that said "F... Schillaci." I laughed so loud people next to me thought I was crazy.
"That's funny. I remember that, I remember the game. Me and my buddies actually had a t-shirt like that that we wore for weeks, that's how much we hated the guy. When I did the movie, I looked for it, but couldn't find it. I told the director about it and they had one made. That was a funny scene."

Ireland had this wonderful musical and literary tradition that has influenced the world. It's remarkable for such a small country. But it seems to be slowing down recently.
"I don't think it's slowing down, I think it's changing as an artform. Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan, if they'd been born 20 or 30 years earlier, probably would have been novelists and playwrights. They are the first generation that grew up with TV, so it's developing into a broader literary/musical/visual area, which is great and exciting."
The Boys & Girl from County Clare is currently playing in local cinemas.

Publication Date: 2005-03-27
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=5050