Meaney in the driving seat

A man of strong views who might have made a politician, Colm Meaney has nonetheless stayed focused on the acting dream that made his parents fret

WAS THERE EVER a time when Colm Meaney wasn't a vital participator in thespian affairs? Of course. The Irish actor is still only 58 and he didn't properly register until the late 1980s. But he does seem to have been around forever. Impressively unchanged since those key appearances in The Commitmentsand various Star Trekincarnations – still curly of hair and square of face – he seems not to let a month go by without lending his gritty presence to a high-profile production. You might have spotted him recently in Robert Redford's The Conspiratoror in the broad comedy Get Him to the Greek.This week he takes a rare lead role in Darragh Byrne's impressive low-budget Irish drama Parked.

More power to your elbow, Colm. Never short of work, it must be difficult for him to find time for less glittery productions. In Parked, he plays a Dubliner who, after many years living in the UK, returns home and, financially embarrassed, is forced to take up residence in his car. Not every successful actor bothers to work with first-time directors.

“It’s not that difficult,” he remarks. “When talking about this film, a lot of people have asked me about working with an inexperienced director. But Darragh has a lot of experience with documentaries. Also, you have to remember that when I came to this Darragh had already been immersed in the project for two years. His knowledge of the project was amazing.”

Working on Parkedgave Meaney a chance to reconnect with the city of his birth. The son of a bread-van driver, he makes a point of returning five or six times a year. But he rarely gets the opportunity to spend protracted periods in Dublin.

“Talking to people, to family and friends, there is a gloom about the place,” he says. “But there’s also a great resilience. I don’t think anything comparable has happened historically in this country: a boom followed by this sort of bust. People are still in shock. But we have learned a lesson. There was so much nonsense, so much bling. We thought we could do no wrong.”

Meaney has always been a political being. Before acting took over his life, he joined Sinn Féin – in its pre-1970 incarnation, before the party split into Provisionals and otherwise – and later spent time with radical British theatre companies, such as 7:84 and Belt and Braces. He may now live sunnily in Marbella, but the heart of a firebrand still beats beneath that amiable exterior. He has arrived home when, somewhat unusually, the nation is paying close attention to an increasingly testy presidential campaign. We can probably guess whom he is endorsing.

“I am supporting Martin McGuinness,” he says. “It’s odd the way the presidency used to be a ceremonial thing. In our history we have appointed presidents without having elections. But this one has become politicised. And the most experienced politician and statesman has clearly emerged as Martin McGuinness.”

Well, maybe. But surely the presidency is still, despite the current arguments, largely a ceremonial position? He or she should – even if this requires a certain blandness – work hard at offending as few citizens as possible. The fact that, rightly or wrongly, so many people dislike or distrust McGuinness could be seen as a disqualifying factor. It’s more important for a president to be tolerated by all than to be loved by a few.

“Yeah. But I think a lot of that mistrust is media-fuelled,” Meaney says, in a tone that does not sound entirely convinced. “I don’t understand it. The man is acceptable to our unionist friends in the North. He served as co-First Minister. He is highly respected in British government circles, both by previous Labour ministers and the current government. What do people want? He’s proved himself over 20 years.”

An articulate man, who listens carefully to counter-arguments, Meaney might have made an effective radical politician. But he always knew that acting was the job for him. As he tells it, theatre gradually took over his life and he just didn’t have the time to wave leaflets or take part in marches. He took acting lessons as a teenager and, after leaving school, secured a place at the Abbey Theatre. Meanwhile, the rest of the family made their way into respectable careers. Not surprisingly, his parents, who had a high regard for education, were concerned when Colm took to the boards.

“We had no connections at all to the theatre,” he says, “so it was a bit shocking to them: ‘You want to be an actor? Are you joking?’”

They would have liked him to go to university? “Exactly. That was very much my father’s attitude. My brother got a commerce degree and went on to business. My younger brother actually is a lawyer. He did it the proper way: he studied, and became a solicitor. I think that was my father’s aspiration for all of us.”

As it happened, his parents need not have fretted. Meaney admits that there were quiet periods. But though never likely to be a romantic lead, he had just the right class of ruddy integrity to secure endless character roles.

He enjoyed the Abbey, but in the late 1970s he made his way to London and then, in 1982, to New York. “The excitement of being there was tremendous,” he says. “It’s so different for young actors today. You talk to them and they say: ‘I’m off to LA for pilot season.’ In my day, when you went to London, that was it, you were gone.”

Eventually, aware that TV and film were the happening industries, he made his way to Los Angeles. Star Trek: The Next Generationcame along in 1987, but before that he had to endure the usual rigours of nervy auditions and heartless rejections. "Ah yeah," he says. "I remember I had this Hugo Boss suit, and three or four of us used to share it for auditions. We called it the lucky suit. 'Can I have the lucky suit tomorrow?' There were periods like that. But something always turned up."

At some point in his late 30s, Meaney went from being That Bloke Who's in Everything to an actor fans could actually name. The story of his ascent up the Star Trekladder is a peculiar one. He appeared in the pilot for Star Trek: The Next Generation, but for many episodes he wasn't even allowed a name. He was, most often, just the chap in charge of the transporter console. But the producers admired him and he gradually found himself nudged to the foreground. When Deep Space Ninewas launched in 1993, his character, Miles O'Brien, was promoted to chief operations officer.

“They liked me, but at first they didn’t know what to do with me,” he says. “They were initially thinking of me for Data. Every few weeks I’d get a call and they’d use me for the transporter chief or whatever. One day I remember looking at the script and I saw this part for Chief Transporter Officer O’Brien. Hang on, who’s this O’Brien? I’m the transporter chief.”

Meaney made an arrangement with the producers to allow him enough time to pursue his busy career in feature films. He's the pilot in Die Hard 2. He flits by in Dick Tracy. But his position was firmly cemented in 1991 when he played Jimmy Rabbitte, scion of a north Dublin dynasty, in Alan Parker's adaptation of Roddy Doyle's The Commitments. Since then, he's worked like a veritable maniac. He was the only actor to play in all three Barrytown films ( The Snapperand The Van, both directed by Stephen Frears, followed The Commitments). One yearns to know what has happened to the Rabbitte family. They would, surely, have something to say about the events that gripped Ireland in the past two decades.

“Yeah, they would,” Meaney agrees. “I know Miramax Pictures begged Roddy for another Commitments. I remember Stephen Frears came running in at the end of The Van, shouting: ‘What are going to do? It’s the last thing he’s written and this is the last day of shooting. We have to get him to write something else.’ We’ve all had conversations about it. I’d love to do something with him again. But Roddy has such integrity he wouldn’t do it unless it was right.”

Divorced from the actor Bairbre Dowling in 1994, Meaney married Ines Glorian in 2007 and now lives with her and his young daughter in the nice bit of Majorca. “I thought it would be all white beaches and drunken English people,” he says, laughing. “But it’s lovely.”

They’re lucky to have him. He might just be a national treasure.

In character Five key Colm Meaney roles

* Jimmy Rabbitte snr in The Commitments(1991)

Agreeably warm as the paterfamilias of a foul-mouthed but endlessly smart and charming family of north Dublin chancers. Alan Parker’s film marked the beginning of Irish chic.

* Miles O'Brien in Star Trek: The Next Generationand Star Trek: Deep Space Nine(1987-1999)

* Like Pte Sponge in Dad's Army, O'Brien began life, initially unnamed, lurking in the background while more prominent characters bickered. Unlike Pte Sponge, he eventually rose to a position of power.

* Agent Duncan Malloy in Con Air(1997) Hang on, is that Colm Meaney? It is. His role as a bumbling Drug Enforcement Administration officer in the noisy Nicolas Cage action flick confirmed his position as a much-sought-after character player.

* Jerry Lynch in Intermission(2003) Outrageously funny as the self-important cop (above, with Colin Farrell) who revels in the attentions of a reality film crew. "You just don't have the requisite Celtic soul, man," he bellows pompously.

* Martin McGuinness in From Pipe Bomb to President(2015)

Yes, we’ve made this up. But think about it. Meaney, who has endorsed McGuinness for president, does, from certain angles, look eerily like the Sinn Féin candidate.