{"id":2240879,"date":"2026-01-19T15:14:41","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T15:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2240879"},"modified":"2026-01-19T15:14:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T15:14:41","slug":"actor-brendan-gleeson-reflects-on-parenting-irish-funerals-and-working-with-boorman-scorsese-and-spielberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/actor-brendan-gleeson-reflects-on-parenting-irish-funerals-and-working-with-boorman-scorsese-and-spielberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Actor Brendan Gleeson reflects on parenting, Irish funerals and working with Boorman, Scorsese and Spielberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Far from the grouchy or mean men he\u2019s often inhabited, Gleeson is gentle and gregarious.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re discussing H is for Hawk<\/span>, Philippa Lowthorpe\u2019s sensitive adaptation of Helen Macdonald\u2019s bestselling memoir, in which Gleeson\u2019s patriarch dies early but hovers over every frame.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s led us on to the difference between the Irish approach to death and that of the English.<\/p>\n

This takes the Dubliner back to the funeral of a friend \u2013 Anthony Minghella, who directed Gleeson in Cold Mountain<\/span> five years before he died in 2008.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt an Irish funeral, if the man or the woman has had a life, all you hear is people laughing and telling stories,\u201d Gleeson says. \u201cIt\u2019s all about what a life they\u2019ve had, how they embraced the life.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that really wasn\u2019t the vibe when the director of The English Patient<\/span> was laid to rest, Gleeson says. \u201cI remember going to his funeral and being absolutely stunned by the lack of\u2026\u201d He trails off, recalibrates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be telling funny stories about Anthony, about things on set, and how, you know, he said he\u2019d do Beckett with me and I\u2019m still waiting.\u201d Instead, the 70-year-old says, \u201cit was all dignity. It was all ceremony. It was all very beautiful in its own way, and full of emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Ireland, by contrast, he says \u201cthere is always conversation, and far more immediate engagement with the person that was there, and you can feel them there, like even in the wake. It\u2019s an incredible, communal embrace of death, in a way that doesn\u2019t happen in Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n

In H is for Hawk<\/span>, Claire Foy\u2019s Helen faces her father\u2019s death by training a goshawk called Mabel.<\/p>\n

The dad in question is the celebrated real-life photojournalist Alisdair Macdonald. A frequent chronicler of The Beatles\u2019 live shows, he was also responsible for the famous shot of Princess Diana and Prince Charles kissing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.<\/p>\n

What drew Gleeson to the role was the chance to play a good man. \u201cI had become very tired of the trope of the toxic father becoming absolutely relentless in the scripts I was reading,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I got very bored with it first, and then I got very sort of irritated by it, and then I began to feel that there was a dearth of role models for young men with regard to fatherhood, being perpetuated in script after script after script.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young men are already insecure about society\u2019s expectations, he argues. \u201cSo I thought the opportunity to play a good father was incredibly valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Brendan Gleeson in ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s Alisdair who encourages Helen\u2019s love of nature, introducing her to birding on their expeditions together. After his death, she becomes consumed by her devotion to Mabel \u2013 who is not just any bird, but a predator with a froideur yet to thaw. Keeping Mabel on her wrist at all times, even as a don at Cambridge, Helen cuts an eccentric figure as her life unravels and her house falls into squalor.<\/p>\n

Foy underwent extensive training to handle the birds, and her scenes carry real authenticity.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s unbelievable,\u201d Gleeson says. \u201cShe has such depth; you can feel a kind of huge intensity in terms of what she\u2019s experiencing.\u201d<\/p>\n

By any measure, training a goshawk is an unusual response to death, but it springs, at least in part, from how Helen was given permission by her father to be strange. This resonates with Gleeson, though he\u2019s careful about where that permission ends.<\/p>\n

His own four sons with wife Mary \u2013 Domhnall, who\u2019s carved out his own stellar career in Ex Machina<\/span> and Star Wars<\/span>, and Brian (Peaky Blinders<\/span>) are actors, while Fergus works in film production and Rory is a writer \u2013 were raised with a similar freedom, but within limits.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s a line with everything in parenthood<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a line with everything in parenthood,\u201d Gleeson says. \u201cIf the strangeness is not going to make them happy, in the sense that there\u2019s excessive aloneness,\u201d he says, you have to find ways to help a child integrate with others, \u201cbecause you don\u2019t want to get completely removed from your environment. We\u2019re kind of herd animals by fundamental instinct.\u201d<\/p>\n

His own generation rebelled against conformity and demanded personal expression. \u201cBut then if you bust out of it, to where you say it doesn\u2019t matter how you engage with your environment, you raise a lot of brats who think that they\u2019re the only people in the world and that their concerns are the only concerns of the world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Gleeson is wary of the current obsession with telling children they\u2019re brilliant at everything. \u201cThe last thing you want to be doing as parents is shoving people into their own corner and saying, \u2018You\u2019re unique, and everybody really should sit up and recognise how brilliant you are.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Gleeson himself came to acting late, only turning professional at 34. Before that, he taught Irish and English at a secondary school in north Dublin, moonlighting with amateur theatre companies.<\/p>\n

Gleeson has a rare gift for balancing menace with unexpected tenderness, and his knack for the curmudgeonly \u2013 whether played for laughs or for darkness \u2013 remains unmatched.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a through-line starting from his breakout role in The General<\/span> (1998), John Boorman\u2019s portrait of Dublin gangster Martin Cahill, in which Gleeson found both charm and bristling threat in a real-life criminal. It carried through to his career-defining turn opposite Colin Farrell in Martin McDonagh\u2019s In Bruges<\/span> (2008), as a contract killer grappling with guilt amid the medieval architecture of Belgium.<\/p>\n

And then his shattering work in Calvary <\/span>(2014) as Father James, a priest marked for death who spends his final days radiating wounded dignity.<\/p>\n

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Brendan Gleeson in ‘Calvary’. Photo: Jonathan Hession<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Ask him about working with the likes of Spielberg and Boorman, and he becomes reverential. \u201cThey\u2019re the heroes,\u201d he says. \u201cJohn Boorman \u2013 I did a thing for the Cork Film Festival where they honoured him as a disruptor. I quoted this stone he had in Wicklow with Celtic swirls carved on it by a monk. Underneath, it said: \u2018John Boorman caused this to be made.\u2019 And I thought, how many things has John Boorman caused to be made? All the things of beauty that he had been part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pauses. \u201cThese guys have been doing this their whole lives, fighting against commerce, fighting to get everything, to try and create something of wonder.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same goes for Scorsese. \u201cWhen I did Gangs of New York<\/span>, I went to meet him in Rome,\u201d Gleeson says. \u201cHe gave me this script, and I couldn\u2019t get over it, he said, \u2018I\u2019ve been trying to make this for 25 years.\u2019 I said, \u2018you\u2019ve chronicled the American experience, and you can\u2019t get the money to make a movie about New York. How is this possible?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

When I mention the Harry Potter<\/span> films in our discussion about parenting \u2013 Daniel Radcliffe was 16, Gleeson 49, when they first appeared together in The Goblet of Fire<\/span> \u2013 and ask what he thought of its young stars coming out against JK Rowling\u2019s hostile views towards trans women, he forcefully demurs. But the flashpoint leads us towards his views more generally on intractable conflicts.<\/p>\n

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I think this is what we can best do as artists: show people that they\u2019re better off being compassionate, being kinder<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI think this is what we can best do as artists: show people that they\u2019re better off being compassionate, being kinder,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it doesn\u2019t mean that you can\u2019t have a slag about somebody, because you don\u2019t have to turn into sort of a wellness factory. What you have to do is just literally believe in the goodness of people, that people only want a chance to live good lives. I really believe that\u2019s what they want to do. Most people. All across the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even on Zoom, Gleeson has real presence. When he laughs, which he does often, his eyes narrow and his grin spreads wide, transforming those craggy features entirely. His face is a palimpsest of everyone he\u2019s played and everything he\u2019s lived.<\/p>\n

I bring up the Guardian<\/span> interview in which he was quoted as saying, \u201cI haven\u2019t got a pretty face\u201d. Does he think that\u2019s been liberating, not having to manage the loss of looks in the way that conventionally handsome actors do?<\/p>\n

Gleeson laughs. \u201cThat\u2019s a really interesting question,\u201d he says. The camera tells a story, he explains, and appearance is part of that story. \u201cIf you have a romantic movie, and these two sublime-looking people are looking at each other, the story is almost told in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s never been bothered about chiselling his looks or whitening his teeth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always more interested in enjoying life, in a way that allowed me to understand the lives of people who live in the world, as against the people who photograph themselves living in the world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Gleeson is fascinated by how good-looking actors navigate ageing. Take Jack Nicholson, he says: \u201cA lot of it has to do with his personality, but also he\u2019s a good-looking gent, and so all of that is a power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Colin Farrell. \u201cIt\u2019s really funny to see women\u2019s reactions to him. They literally blush. He only has to walk in. It\u2019s insane, but it\u2019s a gift to the world, because he\u2019s not a d**k. He\u2019s actually a really cool person underneath it all,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like Farrell and Nicholson are so great at what they do. They\u2019re such brilliant actors. And then this other thing helps.\u201d That grin again. \u201cSo if you haven\u2019t got that, you just do the other bits.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2018H is for Hawk\u2019 is out in cinemas on Friday, January<\/span> 23 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.independent.ie \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Far from the grouchy or mean men he\u2019s often inhabited, Gleeson is gentle and gregarious. We\u2019re discussing H is for Hawk, Philippa Lowthorpe\u2019s sensitive adaptation of Helen Macdonald\u2019s bestselling memoir, in which Gleeson\u2019s patriarch dies early but hovers over every frame. It\u2019s led us on to the difference between the Irish approach to death and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2240880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[353744],"class_list":["post-2240879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-brendan-gleeson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Actor-Brendan-Gleeson-reflects-on-parenting-Irish-funerals-and-working.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2240879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2240881,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240879\/revisions\/2240881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2240880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2240879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2240879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2240879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}