Domhnall Gleeson on messy love, mixed reviews and About Time: ‘People were definitely sniffy about it’
When Domhnall Gleeson was a young actor, he excelled at a certain type of role – and it was not the romantic lead. His first major part was as the dim-witted Davey in Martin McDonagh’s black comedy The Lieutenant of Inishmore, for which he picked up a Tony nomination when he was just 23. “In that play,” he says, “somebody chops all my hair off with a knife. I have a cat that gets shot and explodes all of its blood all over me. Then I have my head shoved in the dead cat. And people laughed at that.” He pauses, considering what it might mean to be good at the “funnily pathetic” roles, as he calls them. “I think that was a part of my personality that I could access really easily. So the notion of being suave or being attractive was alien to me, because that’s just not how I saw myself.”
But then his dad, , the Oscar-nominated star of , sat him down. “He said, ‘You’re going to need to start seeing yourself that way if you want to be considered for that stuff,’” the 40-year-old remembers, his Irish brogue warming up a room in
