How agreeable are you?
It depends on the context. I love a good debate. I would be agreeable in the sense that I’d be very accommodating and I would like to think that I’m very kind. I can have my bitchy days, like anyone, but I’m a very charitable person. If I’m with friends and we disagree on something I can passionately disagree. If it was with a stranger, for the sake of a positive conversation I would probably agree, unless it was something that was just so fundamentally wrong that it required me to publicly disagree with that person. But that rarely happens.
What’s your middle name and what do you think of it?
Gerard. After St Gerard. I don’t mind it. I chose Adam as my Confirmation name.
Where is your favourite place in Ireland?
Connemara. There are no particular reasons. It is a reason as of itself. If I was to try give a reason, it’s the unfettered freedom and fresh air. I think it’s the most rustic and authentic part of the country.
Describe yourself in three words
Introspective. Reflective. Consummate overthinker.
When did you last get angry?
Today. I was walking my dog and he was gone out into the grass to poo. And I’m there with a plastic bag and I can see another guy with his dog, a big huge dog, a big greyhound, lets his dog crap and he just walks off, on the footpath.
What have you lost that you would like to have back?
I’m not going to ask for people who have passed away, because that is the nature of life. If I could get back something, it would be a gold ring that I got from my grandfather in 2005 and he passed away in 2006. I went in to use one of the public bathrooms in one of the garages in Ennis and I lost it. I wouldn’t say it was overly expensive but it was something with sentimental value. It was priceless to me. It took me years to get over it and stop feeling so guilty.
What’s your strongest childhood memory?
The strongest one is obviously the one that scars you the most, that stays with you the most. And that tends to be the most negative. That would be carrying my dead, five-year-old cousin out of the swimming pool after she had drowned. I was 13. That would be the most harrowing. That was my introduction to my teenage years. Tragedy straight off. It is a quite a negative one, but it is one that has scarred me for life. It’s one that revisits the idleness of my mind.
Where do you come in your family’s birth order, and has this defined you?
I’m the eldest. I have three younger brothers. I don’t think it’s defined me. I’m the most childish, to be totally honest with you.
What do you expect to happen when you die?
I expect people will miss you. I expect to leave something like a positive energy. I don’t believe in an afterlife but I do believe that I don’t know enough and don’t have enough proof to disbelieve any of that. I believe that we are big meatballs of electric energy, and that energy must go somewhere.
[ The lives of young Irish Travellers, through our own eyesOpens in new window ]
When were you happiest?
I think the period of time between 10 and 13. I suppose they’re the earliest memories you have of thinking for yourself. You’re still only a baby really, but you’re heading towards the teenage years and your mind is beginning to develop. You become an individual person in your own right. I think the happiest I’ve been in the last five years was on the final night of my final show at the Dublin Theatre Festival. To get a big massive standing ovation. I stood there and I looked out at the audience and I thought, “You know what, buddy, you deserve this one”.
Which actor would play you in a biopic about your life?
Brian Gleeson, if he put on a bit of weight.
What’s your biggest career/personal regret?
Not spending more time with my granny before she passed. I even went and bought a camera, and the intention was to record our life story as oral history. And just when I got the camera, she went into hospital. And she didn’t come out. One of the regrets I have in life is that I allowed life to become so busy, that I was too busy to spend time with people who didn’t have a lot of time left.
Have you any psychological quirks?
I’m very good at reading people. I’m very good at noticing changes in micro-expressions. I’m very good at judging whether somebody’s telling me the truth or lying.
In conversation with Jen Hogan
