From Queer Street to Devon devil with a bashful grin:
Aidan Gillen is a shy man with a talent for seduction
The Independent (London), [December 17th, 2000]
As played by Aidan Gillen, Carver in Lorna Doone, BBC1's big seasonal costume drama, is such a convincing baddie that when he enters the church for the climactic scene in which he attacks his cousin Lorna at a wedding, all the extras hiss him. "It just goes to show what a dark suit and a gun will do for you - especially at a wedding," Gillen laughs. "What appealed to me most about it was the idea of playing the bad guy in a swashbuckling adventure on Christmas Eve. I want to stick up for the bad guy. I wouldn't have wanted to play the good guy - that would have been too sweet. To commit murder and make people choke on their Christmas turkey - now that's what I call fun. I did have various problems during the shoot - trying not to fall off my horse, trying not to make my musket explode in my hand and trying not to look too much like Adam Ant - but, overall, it's a really shiny part for an actor."
Clearly, Gillen has a ball as Carver Doone, a cross between the Sheriff of Nottingham and Darth Vader on a bad day. As he grasps Lorna by the throat, kisses her against her will, and whispers in the most menacing tones, "You will be my wife, you will love me," you too may find yourself leaping out of your armchair to boo him in the best panto-villain tradition. Carver is merely the latest in a long line of magnetic performances from this versatile actor. Gillen's compelling, spiky features have illuminated such varied parts as the idealistic hunger-striker Gerard in Some Mother's Son, the scary Baby in Mojo, and the sad homeless lad Gypo in Safe. Perhaps most memorably, Gillen also played the amoral predator Stuart in Queer as Folk. That was the part that catapulted him from solid pro into headlining star.
The actor downplays his role in the huge success of Channel 4's ground-breakingly frank series about the lives of three promiscuous youngsters in Manchester's gay village. "The series did up my profile," he says, "but it was completely the creation of the writer Russell T Davies. He gets 90 per cent or more of the credit. It struck a chord because the dynamics of the relationship between Stuart and Vince [played by Craig Kelly] were universal. They are two friends - one brash and outgoing, the other much more introverted - who each give the other something he doesn't have. Vince's unrequited love for Stuart is a universal theme, too. Also, boys in T-shirts are always pretty appealing - to men and women."
Gillen was initially drawn to the part because the flamboyant Stuart is the polar opposite of this most shy of actors. "I'd never played a character as arrogant and as full of himself as Stuart," he confirms. "At the time, I'd just had my first kid, so Stuart's life was completely different to mine. That's a great attraction for an actor." Sipping peppermint tea in an Islington restaurant, Gillen sometimes seems to want to disappear into the fur-trimmed hood of the capacious black parka that he keeps on throughout our lunch. And he is so softly spoken that on occasions I have to lean over the table to catch his words.
But he is refreshingly free of preening luvvie talk. "It's natural to be self-critical," he says. "I don't hate my job - I just want to be better at it. In any craft you should be striving to improve yourself all the time, or else what's the point?" He agonises in silence for several seconds over questions he views as especially tricky. The Dubliner almost visibly quails, for instance, at the suggestion that he might be part of a wave of trendy Irish actors. "Trendy? Me?" Gillen asks, incredulously. "I don't know what you're talking about. That idea is just a media invention. I don't feel part of any group. You might just as well say that there's a wave of trendy English actors at the moment."
Similarly, Gillen shudders at the very idea that he might be attempting to boost his own profile by doing this interview - the only one he is giving for Lorna Doone. "I'm not out to further my career by doing publicity," he asserts. "It's expected that you do a certain amount as part of any job, but I do as little of it as I can get away with. Still, I'm more articulate than I used to be. A few years ago, I would have zipped this coat right up over my head.
"But I wouldn't have much self-respect if I actively courted publicity. It diminishes your capacity as an actor if you're visible all the time in the press. People are less likely to believe you in your next role if they're constantly looking at pictures of you shopping in Harrods."
Gillen would rather let the work speak for him. He is currently appearing as Ariel in Jonathan Kent's production of The Tempest at the Almeida in London (for which he has acquired a striking blond barnet and trapeze skills). "I'm enjoying being back in the theatre after five years. When I'm backstage, all these people are turning handles and pulling strings. I feel like I'm part of a magic trick or a Victorian entertainer in an end-of-the-pier show. But those pyrotechnics never get in the way of the play. We're not talking about bearded ladies here."
As if that wasn't enough, the actor is also soon to be seen in three new movies. In The Low Down, for which he won the Pathé best newcomer award at the Edinburgh Film Festival this summer, he stars as a drifter at a crossroads in his life as he approaches the age of 30. My Kingdom, Don Boyd's modern-day update of King Lear, sees Gillen as Edmund to Richard Harris's king. And in The Final Curtain, scripted by John (Trainspotting) Hodges, he and Peter O'Toole play rival game-show hosts. He explains that "they're driven crazy by having to present a front of cheeriness the whole time".
But Gillen does not automatically assume that his good run will carry on indefinitely. If the work ever dried up or became tedious, he says, "I'd get one of those big slippers you can put both feet into and sit and watch telly and drink flagons of cider all day long."
