“I wanted to act ever since I was a kid,” Liam Carney says. “But I never ever mentioned it to anyone. I didn’t think it was possible. In Ireland, at a Christian Brothers school in the 1960s and 1970s, it just wasn’t something that was ever mentioned as a possible career.”
He showed them. Over the past three decades or so, Carney has grown into one of our most deservedly unavoidable character actors. He has been in everything. Back in the early- to mid-1990s he was a regular on Glenroe. He did work on Ballykissangel. At the start of the century he spent months shooting Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York at Cinecittà Studios in Rome. He is currently playing Con Rafferty in Fair City. That serious right-angled head and bristly voice are now essential to the Irish screen industries. I first met him back in the mid-1980s. At that stage he was still juggling a job at the post office with theatre work.
“I knew that if I didn’t try it I would regret it for the rest of my life,” Carney says. “If it doesn’t work at least I’ve tried it. And now I won’t be beating myself up.”
For all the subsequent success, Carney has rarely been offered leading roles in films. It is therefore all the more delightful to see him in full flow at the heart of Sunlight, Claire Dix’s upcoming Dublin drama. Carney plays Iver, a man with motor neuron disease (MND) who inclines towards the possibility of assisted suicide. I take it the subject matter is important to him.
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“That was one of the reasons I wanted to do the film,” Carney says. “We need to have that discussion. With MND you are trapped in your own body. You can reach the stage where you have no quality of life. You can’t communicate with anyone.
“He (Iver) explains that he doesn’t want all the trappings to keep him alive if he has no quality of life. It is really important to have that conversation.”
Carney was born and raised in Dublin, but – perhaps a surprise, given his long association with the capital – he is of proud Co Mayo stock. “I was the seventh in my family, but I was the first one born in Dublin,” he says. “I loved the country. We used to spend every summer in Mayo. I always hated to go back to the city. I have been in Wexford since 1997 now.”
Carney remembers early days scouting for acting work with the now equally busy Frank O’Sullivan. They drank tea and studied the noticeboards. Eventually he happened upon a theatre company that changed so much for so many performers of his generation.
“I saw an audition for Studs, with Passion Machine,” he says of Paul Mercier’s legendary organisation. “I went for that and I got that. Without Paul Mercier and Passion Machine I wouldn’t have stuck at it. I wouldn’t have had the work to give me that confidence.”
Carney has shouldered a deal of responsibilities along the way. Supporting children from two marriages, he has had little chance to take it easy over the years. Earlier, he explained that had he not jumped into the profession he would have always regretted it. That noted, there must have been times when he regretted being in this difficult, often cruel business.
“Oh, big time. There were lots of long periods with no work. Before Gangs of New York I might have done just one play that year,” Carney recalls. “I was doing nixers with friends. Doing a bit of roofing. There were plenty of those times.”
One route to security is taking a job on a soap opera. Many is the experienced Irish actor who has enjoyed a spell on the durable Fair City. Yet, I have read that Carney turned down roles on the continuing drama. What prompted the refusal?
“I didn’t like the parts,” Carney says. “One of them was this wife beater. It was that vibe.”
What eventually brought him round?
This time they assured him that Con Rafferty was “a good guy. A property developer with a conscience”.
Many actors have noted the way the public treat performers in soap operas as part of their family. Movie stars seem to exist on a different plain. But fans think they can merrily slap the backs of actors they see on the telly every day.
“That’s definitely true,” Carney says. “I noticed this when I went in to Glenroe. People own you. You are in their sittingroom – then it was every Sunday; now it’s three or four nights a week with Fair City.
“They become so familiar with your character. It’s confusing. People will come up to you and say hello. You think you know them. But they know the character.”
It is a very different world to the quieter environment he slipped into after leaving the post office in the 1980s. Nobody expected films to land in Dublin. But Carney got work in The Commitments and then in Braveheart. There must have been a temptation to head for brighter lights.
“When I had done The Commitments it probably would have been the right time to go to America – or even to London,” Carney says. “I didn’t, because it wasn’t long after I had separated from my first wife, and I really thought there was a great danger I would lose contact, and that was a deciding factor.”
So, after all the ups and downs, does he now feel that he has gained a kind of security? Carney tells me about hosting a party attended by Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio when shooting Gangs of New York. His CV on the Internet Movie Database is stuffed. He can now relax. Right?
“Not really. Even with Fair City this could end at any time. I don’t know what they are planning,” Carney explains.
“I am consciously keeping my eye open for other work. It is easier because the kids are reared. I have less bills. I still have a small mortgage. I am not comfortable enough to say, ‘I don’t care.’ If I’m going for a job I still really want it.”
Sunlight is in cinemas from Friday, June 16th
