What It’s Really Like To Be… An Actor

They say the grass is always greener and this can certainly be the case when it comes to jobs so in a new series of articles, Her.ie will be sitting down with people in a series of professions to get a true picture of what it is like to walk in their shoes. This week, Damian Kearney, who is best-known for his roles in Love/Hate, The Tudors and The Wind That Shook The Barley, told us about what it's really like to be an actor. He is currently playing Jake Quinn in Stones In His Pockets, which runs at the Gaiety Theatre until the 22 March. _____________________________ I’d say the best thing about being an actor is…getting a job! The best part of what an actor does are the points during rehearsal and during the run where it is starting to move without you having to think too much about it. When you are actually relaxed enough that you are able to hear and take it all in and therefore you’re able to tell the story that is on the page without getting yourself tied up in knots over it. As corny as it may sound, that is very, very satisfying. That’s when you come off stage and you can’t sleep because it’s so exciting. The worst part is… not getting a job! It’s ridiculously uncertain. Someone said to an actor I know ‘how would you describe your career path?’ and he just laughed and said ‘career?’. It’s just constant ups and downs. A typical week is... well, we started in early February and spent maybe a week just going ‘I think the character would walk this way’, ‘he would step left here’ etc. Then we spent another week running the scenes to get them to glue together and then in the third week, the director was making sure that the we were actually listening to what the other person said. Like, you can’t be sitting there with a frown on your face if the other actor just told you that they won the lottery! Sometimes when you’re so wrapped up in ‘sh*t, I have to move left in two seconds’, your ears aren't really open. Then this week has just been putting the final detail into it before people are allowed to come and see it! Before I go on stage, i'm thinking...this will be absolutely terrifying. We feel terrified because the audience is going to be the third presence in the room. There’s been the two of us holding the play together but the audience is going to be the third one and you’ll time things around that. As terrifying as it will be to do it in front of people, they will be of endless help to lift the whole thing. The most common misconception is… that’s a difficult question, there’s just so many small ones. Maybe that we’re in it for the money? Actually, it’s probably that all you have to do is learn your lines and learn your moves. That’s a complete misconception, which feeds into the thing I was saying about listening to the people with you on stage without having to think. Does that make sense? The biggest challenge about my job is…to stay in it! It’s brutally tough, it really is. A lot of jobs are brutally tough but this is one is so uncertain that there really comes a point, it’s almost obligatory, where you think ‘oh do I really want to do this, putting up with being broke again, etc?’. A lot of people find related things to do after a few years, a lot of people will try it for a few months and then wash their hands of it. It’s very difficult to stay in it. A lot of people have fallout in their personal lives just from trying to stay in it. So yeah, the challenge is trying not to lose the sense of why you did it in the first place. At the moment, i'm working on...'Stones In My Pockets' as Jake, who goes to America to hit the big time but comes back pretty disillusioned. He comes back to his rural community and sees a guy who is now in his late-teens, who was a kid when he last knew him. This guy is in real trouble with drugs, a fella he knew that has always been desperate to get out. Jake got out but came back with nothing so there’s kind of a feeling that he took this guy’s opportunity but wasted it. So he is filled with doubts about his own validity in the world but at the same time, he would love to have a nice cushy life back in the Dingle Peninsula. This film crew arrives in and he bumps into Charlie, who has travelled from the other side of the country and is also on the run from himself. He says that his business went bang up in the North of Ireland so, rather than deal with it, he got in the car and drove, with a tent. The two of them are a bit lost and they are forced to confront this through the play. If I wasn't an actor, i'd be...I have a H.Dip so i'd probably do something with that. I’m trained as a French teacher and I do TEFL teaching. I’ve started writing as well so I think I’d do that, whether in my own time or if someone was willing to pay me! Marie Jones' Stones In His Pockets, directed by Ian McElhinney, is now open at the Gaiety Theatre and runs for two weeks. See www.gaietytheatre.ie for details.