Paul Farren caught up with Irish actor Seán McGinley at this year's Galway Film Fleadh to discuss his latest release, On A Clear Day, and the challenges and opportunities facing actors in cinema today.

Paul: How did you get the part?

Seán: Well, I was sent the script and I loved it the first time I read it. It was just a beautifully crafted piece of work, the core of the story and all of that… I heard Peter was doing it; I got a call from Gaby [Dellal, director of On A Clear Day], and Sarah the producer, to go over to London to meet them, to talk about it and see how I felt about it. I had a very strong response, so I just started gabbing, because it had made such an impression on me. So they just sat back and listened, and it was kind of obvious that we were on the same wavelength. Then they said 'okay, would you like to do it?' I said 'absolutely'. That was that.

Were you always earmarked for that role?

You'd have to ask Gaby that, but I'm sure there were other people that she talked with, but as with all these things sometimes it's down to the luck of the draw. It's a mysterious process, casting.

How do you feel about the process of casting?

I've been involved in both sides of it from seeing people audition for Druid, and stuff like that. It's like the leaving cert; it's imperfect, but it's the best thing we have. You try to make it as easy as you can for people, but it's never… some people do brilliant auditions, then don't quite come up to it, and vice versa, people who are really good clam up at auditions. An audition is such a one-off; it's a fragmented piece.

And what they're going to do in an audition may not give you an idea… For instance, in theatre when you start the job you've got four weeks rehearsal, and rehearsing with a bunch of people who all start at the same time. And the excitement of that is 'where are we gonna be in four weeks?' You don't quite have that process in film.

Did you have a rehearsal process?

We kind of gathered a week or so beforehand in Glasgow, and we worked through pretty much the whole script. The writer, Alex Rose, was there, and Gaby, and all the various actors. We had kind of collective read throughs of the thing, and had a little bit of a chat about it, doing more individual detail work on scenes. So we got to know each other before the first day's shooting, which is very important.

Rehearsal has a very limited value on film; you can run your way around the jogs of the story, and stuff like that, but when it actually comes to going from the rehearsal room to the location, it's a completely different animal.

It's very hard to get the luxury of a long rehearsal on a film, especially when it's fairly low-budget, but you achieved amazing things.

It doesn't always happen. What they call a rehearsal on a film is not actually a rehearsal. On the day of the shoot you have a line up, and then you've a 'rehearsal', but rehearsing is usually just not bumping into anybody, and hitting your mark, and all of that stuff.

It's basic; you're not exploring anything, you're not digging anything out. It is useful, but the most useful part is just talking about it, and batting it back and forth, but not necessary laying it down in a fixed way. But if you can get to the stage where you are at ease with the other actors, and everybody is kind of listening to each other and ready to go with whatever happens on the day; if you get to that state then you've every chance. But, as you know yourself, you can have all the ingredients, but it's in the lap of the Gods.

Gaby has a background in acting, did you find she has a good understanding of what actors have to go through – which I feel a lot of directors don't?

Everybody comes from different backgrounds, but it's important – and it's become mystical... people go on about 'the process', and it becomes almost a sacrament and people get a bit precious about it. But actually, in the nuts and bolts of the thing, great acting and great filmmaking doesn't happen by accident. There is a craft to it and, because you are dealing with intangible things like emotions that you try to recreate in a situation, it's not something that you can switch on and off; people don't have a bag of tricks. Well, some people actually do have a bag of tricks, and I hate watching people who have a bag of tricks, because you can see it coming a mile away.

You see it in stars especially.

But some of the great actors can do it, like Meryl Streep. I think that the things she pulls off in front of a camera are miraculous sometimes. But there are loads of great actors around who do that stuff. But it's all about… if you can create a bunch of people who are really listening to each other, that's all you have to do really, and then let the story come out… and if you're really listening, the acting happens by itself. I mean, that's the state you aspire to; you rarely get to it, but you live for the moments when you do – and hopefully the camera's running when those moments happen. Not always; sometimes it happens in rehearsal, and then you try to get close to it on a take, but maybe you never hit that magic thing. And other times totally unexpected will happen, somebody will, say, deliver a line slightly differently, and then you deliver something else back to them, and then it just spirals, and you end up with something extraordinary.

That's part of the process…

Yes, exactly. And because it's such delicate thing you have to be really careful about it. And if you're not experienced, and if you don't respect the fact that such a process exists, you've no chance really. It'll end up relying more on the editor, or how long the camera track is, or how many different shots you used to set up the scene, and they keep cutting away, cutting in and out. Very often that's the sign they're trying to pull the wool over the audience's eyes.

That there's something lacking in the script or the direction…

…Yeah, and the acting as well

What Gaby managed to pull off were some very beautiful visuals, and a very grounded story. But the visuals never fought against the character elements… that's a big thing to pull off.

I suppose ultimately it's the old cliché: it's a bit of storytelling. Because the cinema has to have a visual structure, a bit of coherence to it, so you have to be very careful in terms of the rhythm and that; how the scenes cut together, how scenes fit together: emotional scenes, funny scenes, so on. Sometimes you have to give the audience a breath as well. It's a combination of all those elements. And it has to be boxed in the structure. You have to do all of that without strangling the audience.

Or showing off the structure; you don't want to be too clever, either. In On A Clear Day I liked the use of reflective surfaces, there was an awful lot of that.

But again, when we did the scene in the pool when Peter and Jamie have the big confrontation – the first rehearsal of that was to shoot it. We shot it, and it was absolutely brilliant. Then, because of technical things, we had to go away and come back and away and come back, but they achieved it. All we had to do – myself and Ron and Benny – was just watch what was going on, and they're were watching us reacting, but all we're doing was reacting to what they're doing, so the boys in the pool were doing our job for us. All we were doing is listening to them. When that toing and froing is going on it's fantastic. And there was a great bunch of lads on this – and lassies, as well.

It's a great cast across the board, including the young fellas.

Peter, Jamie, and Benny – and the kids, were great, they were brilliant lads. And Brenda as well, what she can do in half a second on screen… and it's not contrivance, she is so in the thing. She's a fantastic woman; she's just great craic. One time we were in the Isle of Man, and a whole bunch of us went out one Saturday night; we went into this kind of superpub place. Billy Boyd was there, meself and Brenda and Ron Cook were there. The Lord of the Rings was big news at the time, so they were all over Billy, you know. He kind of looked over at meself and Brenda, and of course the kids thought that me and Brenda were Billy's mum and dad. So we started saying 'Come on Billy, now come on sweetie'! And that helps a lot, too, when people trust each other.

It's the most important thing you can have on a set.

Absolutely, it's essential. Because when the chips are down, and you've got an hour to shoot a scene that you should have half a day to do, and you have to do it, you need people on your side.

I remember when we were working on The General with Boorman, and that was one of the best experiences ever to work. It was clear from quite early on that was something special, in terms of Brendan's performance, and Seamus Deasy. And it was very meticulously planned, to the extent that we'd see the shotlist for the week, and that is unheard for actors, it's something you usually keep from actors – I don't know why. You'd do a scene, and Boorman kind of told us, 'look, if you feel something about the scene, or want to say something, do, and if you feel like throwing something in, do; and if it works, we'll use it, and if it doesn't work it doesn't matter, but don't be afraid to, you know? It's really valuable when you come up with something'. And as a result we ended up that… there were scenes that we did that were exactly per script, and you'd be doing them, and rehearsing them, and then it would occur to you 'Oh, what if we did this as well' and he says 'Okay, go ahead with it' and he'd reset the camera. We ended up improvising – there are a few scenes in that film that are completely improvised – but he was so on top of his material, he'd tear up the next five pages of script because we didn't need them now, because we've got this other scene. And that was very exciting to be involved in; you felt really part of the process of filmmaking, not just a hired hand brought in to do something.

And when you have experiences like that you know how good it can be, how exciting the whole process can be. Sometimes there can be very tedious experiences, and bad experiences where you're maybe miscast in something, or it's not working… that's inevitable, and you have to soldier on through those things, and learn from them and survive them.

It's great quality in a director, knowing when someone else has had a brilliant idea.

Absolutely. All the great guys are like that: Jim Sheridan, Gaby is like that, Boorman…

What was Winterbottom like?

Great, I found him great. I worked with him twice.

I have to say, that was one of the greatest performances ever, your Charlo [In Roddy Doyle's Family, directed by Michael Winterbottom]. I've never seen someone who was so fucking horrible, and yet you feel sympathy for them at the same time.

Thanks. It was all there in the writing from the start. We didn't change a full stop or a comma on that. Not that we couldn't do it, cause Roddy was around and he says 'Look, if you can find something… by all means' but the unsaid thing was 'It had better be at least as good if not better'. And that's absolutely all you need from a writer. As it turned out, pretty much everything from the script survived, and it's there in total. But the great thing about that was Michael directing it and Andrew Eaton producing it as well, and that was the early stages of their collaboration; they went on to form their own company after that. But there was a sense anything you wanted to do or try, you could. Also, an implied thing with Michael is 'I fucking casting you in this thing, so that means you can do the job; that goes without saying'. And it's a very empowering that. And again we were kind of aware that there is something special going on. And you see it in those kids, like Barry Ward…

They're a whole family.

… and Nelly Conray. I thought those kids – as performers – they were astonishing, at times, really astonishing.

The Claim [also directed by Winterbottom] was very different; my involvement was much smaller, but it was a much bigger scale thing. It was a huge scale in terms of the logistics. And we were up in the Rocky Mountains in February, they built this town – it took them six months to build it on a virgin site in the mountains. So there was a lot of time-constraint, and budget, then the big weather considerations; they were actually racing to beat the melting snow. March till early April. And, okay, there were some flowers in the finished article, but that's the way they work.

Then it's hard to believe that the same man who made Family went on to make among other things, The Claim, and then In This World – an absolutely amazing; absolutely astonishing film. They're very prolific, and they have an incredible set-up in their office; they have these parties now and then where they invite people who've worked for them, and their staff. And there's a real, healthy… they move onward all the time, they move from one thing to the other, and some things work better than others. Their willingness to change and adapt… I think they're in the front line…

I think Winterbottom is definitely one of the most interesting directors at the moment. Another one I think is really interesting is Shane Meadows.

Yeah, I loved his Dead Man's Shoes, what a scary film that is! Just brilliant, like Paddy Consadine is great, and fucking frightening – this is the man that played this confused fella in In America!

But it just shows you if you've got a story that you believe in, and everybody says it's daft, if you really persuade it and push it to its logical conclusion you can bring anybody with you, you know? There is a great play, by an American writer called Sam Shepard, True West, it's a fantastic play. There's a scene in it where the writer character, who is wrecking his head with this 'Fuck it, I can't finish this story', and his loser brother says 'Writing is for poofs, any fucking eejit could do that'. So he says, 'Okay, you do it then'. And the brother completes the story, and yer man goes to it and says 'This character drives out to the desert for 400 miles with no petrol and no water – you can't do that!' and the brother says 'I can, because it's my story. I can do anything I want with this story'. He's got a supercharged analytic converter, or whatever you call it. And then he just takes off on this flight of fancy. And there comes a point where the writer suddenly realises 'he's fucking mad, but he's right!' You can do anything you want, and that's what Shane Meadows does, and that's what Winterbottom does, all the great people do it. Peter [Mullen] does in his films… Magdalenes Sisters we know very well in this country because it was a huge success here, and I loved it; but I really loved Orphans, have you seen it? It's great stuff, it verges off into madness at times, but it's about grief, and I found it really moving.

And great actors again.

Aw, the lads were astonishing. Frank Weller, and Gary Lewis… That gag where your man decides to carry the coffin on his own, he's carrying it on his back. You're crying with laughter and you're breaking your heart at the same time. He's so fucking straight that character, the Gary Lewis character; he wants to do the right thing to the point of insanity… it's so believable.

That heart in the characters makes the story tick. That's another weakness I see in Irish films.

We've gone from the rural kitchen sink drama – and it became so twee: tweed caps, and bicycles – to now you can't make a contemporary drama in this country without a cappuccino machine in every shot, you know, it has to be a café bar. And it's a rejection of what came before, but the truth lies somewhere else – you can have both.

Living in Dublin, now – I'm not from Dublin, but I live in Dublin. Once you get to know a place it's different, there's places like Irishtown, Ringsend, parts of the inner city – you're back to real people tearing lumps out of each other, and all the rest of it. Then when you go down the country it's like you're going to the interior. It's a completely different world than that described by the Dublin 4 media. I mean, you read The Irish Times... I've serious problems with The Irish Times. It's becoming, I don't know what it's becoming, like a sort of PD, judgemental… and there's a kind of thrill tone emerging now. You've still got individual voices there, like John Waters; I love what he does. I don't necessary agree with what he writes, but the fact it's his own opinion, you know. This isn't an opinion that has been formed in pubs with 20 other journalists all agreeing with each other. This is somebody who has a really particular view of the world, and it's important that people like him are allowed. Tom Humphries, the sports writer, I think he's phenomenal; I think he's the best writer in The Irish Times.

But apart from those – and I just use The Irish Times as representative of the media in general, like RTÉ News – they talk about 'down the country', about the 'regions' in a kind of impersonal way, and they lose a lot. And a lot of the drams that RTÉ used to do – if it's a rural setting it's Wicklow, but there are a lot more places in the world. I did a thing earlier this year, it's coming out in Autumn, called Pure Mule. That was a fantastic experience. I did one of them. Eugene O'Brien wrote it and he's from Midlands – he's from around Offaly – and they shot it in Banagher, pretty much, that was the base, and a lot of the action was shot around there. And to go to a place like that informs what you do, it comes out through the pores of the piece. And hopefully it will show on-screen as well.

You feel positive about it?

Well, I haven't seen any of it or anything like that, but I felt very good about doing it. The script was fantastic; a really quirky, honest piece of writing, and it is who it is. Eugene is a fantastic writer.

You said it's set in the midlands.

It's a different world. And the Dublin 4 version of Offaly would be fucking excruciatingly boring. Whereas when you go in there, and you've people telling their own story, then it's interesting because there's no gap between the storyteller and the story. It's there, and you take it or leave it. We're not making it for you, we are making for ourselves, this is our story – and that's how you do it. That's why James Joyce wrote Ulysses… Imagine Joyce is going to pitch: 'It's a novel, and it's set in one day…'

I think that's where a lot of filmmakers fall down. I know a lot of filmmakers who are always asking things like 'what do the Board want?' You have to say 'this is what I want, and of course I want someone to look at it…'

You presume that the audience will know that you haven't set out to make their lives deliberately miserable, but things succeed and fail. I've been to plays and films and gigs and stuff where, okay, it mightn't have worked completely, but you just know instinctively that they aimed for the sky and they tried, and I find that satisfying. The things that really piss me off are brilliantly competent productions with really gifted people doing their stuff that they can do so well, and it's all in the comfort zone.

You see that a lot in dramas on RTÉ

I think that the new guy who's in charge – Cathal Goan – I think he's great, he's just fantastic, and that given time… Already he's begun commissioning… like the Eugene O'Brien thing, and some of the one-off dramas he's done. He's taking the writer seriously. But before him there was a gap of 20 years when there was nothing, apart from Glenroe and Fair City. I think now there is somebody there like Cathal who is actually serious, who knows the amount of writing talent there is around the country, and he is allowing them to do their thing, not fucking fill in the dots on some brief that writers get – I know that that happens too – and that's deadly.