Aidan Gillen:
Dazed and Confused
[February 2001, #74]
Aidan Gillen played television's first gay bastard in "Queer As Folk". Now as he prepares to play another kind of fairy - Ariel in "The Tempest" - Gillen talks over the finer points of urban alienation as experienced by his latest character Frank in Jamie Thraves' "The Lowdown".
Step forward please, weakness. Whether he likes it or not - and chances are, after a lengthy conversation and a couple of stiff early evening coffees, that he wouldn't - Aidan Gillen is noted for playing strong chracters. A strong character. If the stirling actor's steely gaze and thick, gloss black curls have a certain resonance, this is largely due to the part that was his big break - his portrayal of the character Stuart in the Channel 4 drama "Queer As Folk". His character fucked a schoolboy, then fucked him off, played an elongated and thinly resolved game of playground kiss chase with his less audacious best friend and generally affronted the entire moral sensibility of the Daily Mail reading public (not to mention most of his native southern Ireland).
Rewind a couple of years, to the filming of "QAF" on a drizzly Manchester Canal Street in January. Decked with the all visual trickery of flashy street lanterns and strobed cornerstones, the street appears like some bizarre simulacrum of a Brazillian street carnival. The cast and crew had a gung-ho mentality to production. Everyone was having fun. The show's writer and conceiver Russell T Davies was positively swirling, like a new gay hedonist evangelist, safe in the knowledge that the miraculous overhaul that he had witnessed first-hand of a working class, Northern city into some pink mecca would make for engaging mainstream TV drama (it would). Gillen's co-stars, the barely post-pubescent Charlie Hunnam and longer-toothed Craig Kelly, behaving righteously as thought this was the big break (it was, kind of). And there in the corner, looking slightly sulky with a brolly over his head and noticeably removed from the surreal air of hollity surrounding a ten hour, all-night shoot, was the real star of the show. "Look," Gillen told me at the time, "I just want to play exciting parts. This is an exciting part. I pick and choose what I do. And I'll always do that."
And here he is, two years later, in a dimly lit Islington cafe, making good on his promise. Currently in the final throes of rehearsals for his portrayal of an altogether different variety of fairy, Ariel, in Shakespeare's final bow-out "The Tempest", a slew of post-"Folk" roles have carried him a long way from the tinselled evocation of the Northern gay experience that was "QAF". SInce playing Stuart, Gillen's roles have included parts in low budget American psychological drama, "Buddy Boy", Jamie Thraves' forthcoming geature debut, "The Lowdown", and now, Shakespeare. One and all share a common thread: weakness. Pop psychology says the "QAF" experience left him hungry for a different kind of attention altogether. "I do a lot of hanging around on screen now," he laughs, only slightly disingenuously, "and it suits me fine."
The new resolution in Gillen is to "only appear on stage and in films. As far as possible." "QAF" left him with the recognition complex. "The television does something strange to you. I hadn't done much TV before, but what I have done, the experience is... you know, it's too much. The part I played in "Queer As Folk" was a strong part and it was something that I wanted to do but I had no idea what it'd lead to. I just didn't think about it. The recognition factor is too weird."
Does it fuck your head up?
"No, but it just takes away a certain part of yourself. You're contending with an extraordinary, strong, fictional character and of course no one wants to see beyond that. Why should they? It lodges. All the stuff that I'd done before was barely seen, certainly in comparison. I enjoyed playing it, but I wouldn't want to go back there."
It's suggested that there was something singular about the part. It was certainly new to television.
"And that is, of course, why I did it. I'm proud of it and I think it was great quality, but the rest of it...you can take it."
Did it surprise everybody?
"Not me. I wouldn't have done it if I thought it would have fallen flat, if I hadn't thought that it would have been good quality. It certainly hasn't done me any harm, you know? Career wise, I'd had a lean period beforehand and I haven't stopped working since."
Aidan GIllen has an odd approach to work. Odd not only in its honesty and discretion, but in his laissez-faire, take-it-or-leave-it spin on the usual actors' treadmill that says "if you ain't working, you're "resting"; if you're "resting", you ain't worth a dime." His resting time is genuinely appreciated. "I actually prefer not working. I don't mind not doing it. I forget that I'm an actor and that's not a bad thing." He likes head space and admits to being frustrating for directors, particularly theatrical directors. "I know you should be as generous as you can in rehearsals but I like working at gunpoint and I don't think I really know what I'm doing until there's an audience in front of me."
Given most of his conversational thread, it's something of a wonder that he works at all, though he says that "directors seem to see something" in him that he doesn't see in himself. To emphasise his point, he looks genuinely astounded, gaping mouth wide open at the very idea.
Thraves' "The Lowdown" may be some answer to the conundrum. Largely a memoir piece for the director ("I wear his clothes in it, draw your own conclusions"), it's a film so slight as to appear almost arrogant ("You think it's arrogant?" muses Gillen, "That's a good thing, I think.").
Gillen carries it, undoubtedly. His Frank makes David Thewlis' Johnny in "Naked" - probably "The Lowdown"'s closest cinematic cousin in terms of theme if not form - look like a pantomime dame. The loveless sex and character-deflating quandaries of living very much on the outskirts of a city as oppressive as London are comparable. The delivery couldn't be more different. Gillen was awarded Edinburgh Film Festival Best newcomer for the part. As ever, he doesn't know why he was given the role. "I've never got, and I'm never going to get flashy parts because of the way I look," he says.
Do you think you look slightly dysfunctional?
"You do, obviously."
There's a certain menace in your eyes.
"They're just crossed. No, there's something dark in the character which only unleashes itself when he lets go at the end."
The central character engages...
"...While being the least communicative. Exactly. That was what interested me about the character. I like the element to it that there isn't any opinion going on. I like the fact that it's about the tiny steps that human beings take. For me, the stuff of life that is really simple is the most interesting. Ordinary things. If you've seen any of Jamie's other shorts the way it shot is surprising. It's really quite odd, but it sustains itself. He's just very laid-back. The atmostphere of this is very much his own. I've seen it twice since and I really liked it."
"I saw it in Edinburgh with an audience that hadn't seen it before and it freshens it for you. It makes sense of it again. There isn't any conversion there, which is exactly the kind of thing I want to do. I'm not interested in working on compromised material where everybody has had a say in it. When I saw it I thought that it had an even broader appeal than I'd imagined. I guess when we were doing it I just thought of it as this arty film, which is great. But you don't know whether anyone will get it."
