For all her success, Eileen Walsh dreams of regaining theconfidence she had as a 17-year-old actor, afraid of nothing andsure of her craft
EILEEN WALSH remembers a time when it was all so easy; when heracting was effortless, unselfconscious, and her work ethic had allthe wide-eyed innocence of an untainted paradise.
It was the opening night of her first professional job, in RoughMagic's production of Gina Moxley's Danti-Dan, and Walsh, then a seventeen-year-old ingénue, arrived to work ten minutes before she wasdue to open the play. Her director was livid, her writer anxious."Who do you think you are?" she was asked, although it's unclearwhether at that stage of her career Walsh yet had the answer.
"I wasn't head-wrecked about it," she recalls, today a warm andengaging presence. "I didn't know what I know now." What Walsh nowknows, 13 years later, goes beyond the professional courtesy ofshowing up to work at least an hour before walking on stage (thesedays she is usually the first person in the theatre) to includefirst-hand experience of the peaks and troughs of so precarious aprofession.
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As one of the most talented stage actors of her generation shehas inhabited roles as diverse as the violent Runt in Enda Walsh'sextraordinary Disco Pigs, to the exhilarating speaker of Mark O'Rowe'sgrimly fantastical Terminus. On film she has distinguished herself incharacter roles such as Crispina, a tragic victim of Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters, and the anxious young Midlandswoman in Eugene O'Brien's compelling television drama Pure Mule.
But while she has received rave notices for her performances andrecently scooped major awards for her achievements - taking theaward for Best Actress at this year's Irish TimesTheatre Awards for Terminus, and recently named Best Actress at the TribecaFilm Festival for her role in Eugene O'Brien'sEden- she has also known confidence-shaking periods ofunemployment and will readily confess to terrifying bouts of stagefright. No wonder she thinks back to Danti-Danwith such amusem*nt and fondness.
"I've learned so much since then. I love the rules of thetheatre and the respect you need to show each other. But I alsolove my confidence at that point, thinking it will take me twominutes to get ready. I wish I had that still." She makes it soundlike the time before the fall.
Appropriately enough then, Walsh is here to talk about anotherparadise lost in Eden, the film adaptation of Eugene O'Brien's 2001 play,which now receives a much-deserved cinema release at Dublin'sLighthouse Cinema. Although it is a film of uncommon intimacy,moving from the vivid articulation of the play to an eloquence ofsilent moments and whispered words, Declan Recks's film had clearambitions to be seen on a big screen. (It premiered during theDublin International Film Festival and was later broadcast onRTE.)
This limited release gives us the chance to savour the dreamlikeimagery of Owen McPolin's cinematography while observing the quietdespair of Walsh's Breda and Aidan Kelly's Billy, as the spark oftheir ten-year marriage is slowly, poignantly extinguished and theyrage against the dying of its light.
It was a part that Walsh almost didn't pursue as a point ofprinciple: her sister, Catherine Walsh, had originated the roleonstage and eventually insisted that Eileen audition for it. "Itwas the most amazing performance that I'd seen her do," Eileenrecalls.
"I've seen her do brilliant performances before and after, butthat was a point where it all came together: for writer, directorand actors. And that's a lovely thing to watch because it doesn'thappen all the time. Part of me wanted her to see it through tofruition, if I'm honest, because that's only fair. But the businessis so horrible, sometimes you don't get to do it. And no bettergirls for understanding it either. We know what the business islike."
Indeed, when Disco Pigswas adapted for film, Eileen was passed over forthe part of Runt, while her co-star, Cillian Murphy, remained. Tohave been sundered from such a collaborative effort clearly stillburns, and it may have contributed to Walsh's obvious sense ofself-consciousness, one that rings through in frequent disarminglyjocular but defensive remarks.
When asked about her drive towards theatre, for instance, sheadopts a forced cheeriness and says, "Well, with a face like this,theatre is my main thing actually. Because it's harder to sellyourself movie-wise unless it's a character-driven part." Thisrather uncharitable self-assessment belies Walsh's unique physicalversatility and a capacity to seem either plain or beautiful as apart requires. In The Drowned World, we were asked to accept her asa grotesque, while her updated Pegeen Mike for the Abbey's Playboy of The Western Worldwas a near-looker with abrilliantly awful bleached-blonde hairdo. Edenalso exploits her unconventional beauty, as a lonelyBreda battles with her weight and self-image, poignantly insecureabout her own desirability.
Walsh's professional drive betrays no uncertainties orinsecurities. Growing up in Cork she found a natural aptitudetowards performance, delighting in the Saturday morning workshopsin the Crawford Gallery from the age of 13. "Not to be egotistical,but I just knew I was good at it," she says. "You could move peopleor make them laugh. I always knew it was where I was going. Icouldn't understand it when I didn't get jobs, but it would neverbother me. It was always a part of me."
Following Danti-Dan, she pursued acting studies in Trinity Collegewhile tasting major success with Corcadorca's Disco Pigsduring her first year.
If Walsh seems to have an outside view of herself, her approachto work is conversely unmediated and instinctual. Her sisterCatherine, she says, is intense and methodical, where she isinclined to wing it. Vicky Featherstone, the Scottish director andone of Walsh's most frequent collaborators, has spoken of her as akind of risk-enabling muse. "Rehearsing with her is a massiveprocess of discovery," Featherstone once said, "because I neverknow how she's going to approach a character."
For her part Walsh is content to outline her rituals - herrecent conversion to running, the two songs she always sings as avocal warm-up - but is wary of discussing her processes. "It's sohard to talk about that kind of stuff, because I don't know reallyhow I approach something."
She will put the script down as soon as possible, she allows,because otherwise, "you're not embodying anything, you're nothelping anyone."
DISCUSSING TERMINUS, which she considers a personal highlight of aparticularly successful year - one that began with an eight-weekcommitment to the Abbey's production of Savedand turned into a year of consistent work with thetheatre - Walsh can sound both fearless and troubled by theexperience.
She was unafraid to challenge writer and director Mark O'Roweover the flights of fantasy she had to deliver, ("Really, Mark,"she said of her most thrilling passage, "can we not cut it? It'ssuch a boy's thing.") but was severely unnerved by the pressures ofperforming its unforgiving rhymes and rhythms.
"I've never done anything that's made me so scared," she says."Your fear is that you drop a line. Your fear is that you forget.And if you f*ck up, the audience know you f*ck up. No one else cansave you, like in a normal play."
Coming after a confidence-sapping year spent without work, suchpressures brought about a terrifying stretch of stage fright in the30-year-old actor, accentuated by the fact that her husband StuartMcCaffer and their two-year-old daughter, Tippi, had moved fromtheir home in Edinburgh to Dublin for the year.
"So there was an awful lot going on," she says, leavening herharrowing honesty with a tone of embarrassed good humour. "I criedon opening night before the show. I remember standing in that mankyold laneway outside the Abbey and crying and just wanting not to goon. I vomited on my way home one night. I remember standing onstage another night just thinking, you could actually just leave.You don't have to be here . . . And it's awful when you feel likethat." Her anxieties did not subside with Terminus's tour to New York and I wonder how she carriedon through it.
"It sounds so naff," she responds. "I had two friends thatpassed away. And both of them, I feel, are responsible for the yearI've had. And I started thinking, You're fine. You've got peoplelooking out for you. You have to stay in the moment. Stoppanicking. Stop thinking ahead."
It is not the first time that she has spoken of the importanceof staying in the moment, or the pre-performance rituals that helpsilence her doubts and self-consciousness. For all her successes,though, the pressures never abate, they only change.
Great reviews, she thinks, leave you with a higher grace to fallfrom. Yet for all her concerns for the scrutiny and stresses of theoutside world, in performance this extraordinary actress stillseems truly free. There she sheds all reserve and recaptures thefreedom of an uncorrupted world; each performance, in some smallway, returning her to a personal Eden.
Eden is in The Lighthouse Cinema, Smithfield. The AbbeyTheatre's production of Terminus tours to Edinburgh's FestivalFringe in August.
