Aidan Quinn interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke, 2002-07-26
“I categorically, unreservedly, with all my heart, heartily dissaprove of beating children!’
Aidan Quinn normally speaks in a lazy, Chicago-Irish drawl. He normally leans back in his chair and hangs loose, he’s quite a laid back guy. But the subject of child abuse makes him sit up straight and use the full force of his mighty actor voice, to impress this upon me. I am in no doubt that he means what he says. Apart from the fact that he has two children himself, -whom he absolutely adores-Aidan is a man who cares deeply about the state that the world has got into, child abuse by the clergy being one element of it. I last ran into him at a charity ball, in aid of the Red Cross. He had been in Dublin, working on a film and just happened to be staying in the hotel where the ball was taking place. The organisers had spotted him and asked him to come and be one of the celebrity guests, Sinead O Connor was the other one. And he agreed. Despite being exhausted after the day’s work and really, REALLY he said not wanting to drink, because of having to get up and do an important scene the following morning. We sat through an interminable auction and chewed on an overcooked roast beef and he smiled cheerily and flirted obligingly with the women, who were overjoyed to have him there to stare at. At one point he even donated a kiss, in return for a donation to the cause.
Aidan Quinn’s eyes are very blue and he is very very beautiful to look at. Because of this, women are generally entranced by him. He has, in fact, the face of an angel and a way of looking at you that is priestlike, at times, like an Italian saint. And at other times is cheeky, charming, and downright sexy. During the dinner, we talked about angels. Aidan has a special connection with the Archangel Michael, he says and often feels the angel’s presence around him. I asked him then why he wanted to sit through a tedious charity function, when he clearly needed a good night’s sleep. He said that if he is in a position to help just by attending a dinner, then he considers it his duty to do so.
We met in Galway, and again Aidan looked exhausted. This year, the Galway Film Festival payed tribute to him and showed three of his films. He also gave an acting masterclass and a public interview. His brother Declan Quinn gave a cinematography class and his sister Marian Quinn premiered a short film that she produced and also appeared in “Coney Island Baby’ a new Irish feature film. His other brother, Paul Quinn showed his film ‘This is my Father”, in which Aidan stars. The Quinnasty had taken over the festival and their proud parents were there, too.
My interview was postponed, which I didn’t mind, but I was only going to be allowed to have twenty minutes with Aidan, he’s so very much in demand. I was flustered. The publicist was calling to see if I’m on my way and I wasn’t even late. I said yes, I’m in a taxi. At the hotel, Aidan was saying goodbye to the last press person and I was ushered in to a conference room. I’m sorry, you can only have ten minutes, the nice lady said. We’re running behind schedule. Aidan looked knackered. He sometimes does sixty interviews in a day, he says, when he’s promoting a movie. So today is relatively easy. He shook hands and looked at me curiously. “I know you don’t I?”. I reminded him. “Oh yes,” he said. “You’ve changed your hair.” And he sat back and gazed at me with the fabulous eyes. I struggled with my brain, to boot it back up.
Is everybody in your family in the film business?
“I have one brother that’s a landscaper,” he said. ‘Nothing to do with films.” I should have known that, obviously. How did the family end up with so many actors?
‘I get asked that question continuously. Maybe it’s because of moving back and forth so much, between here and the States, it gave us a slightly removed eye on both cultures. And my father is a literature teacher, so there’s a love of storytelling and literature.”
Later, during the public interview, this question was raised again. He asked his parents, who were in the audience. ‘Mom, Dad, do you know?’ They didn’t.
“But we are a true Irish-American family,” he said.
You don’t drink a lot, I pointed out. I remembered him struggling with one pint of Guinness, at the ball.
“Oh, I drink too much, just like everybody else in this country. I watch myself because I like it, so I have to. And usually when I’m here, I’m working. Last night I had a few.”
How did he become an actor?
“When I was eighteen, I was living in Dublin and I saw a wild production of Juno and the Paycock and it really inspired me. It started germinating in my head that I could do that.”
And he did. He began in Chicago, in a play called “The Man in 605” and quickly progressed to playing the lead in “Hamlet”, ‘A Streetcar named Desire” and ‘Fool For Love’. His first feature film was ‘Reckless’ and that was the one and only time he passed an audition, he says. At the time, he had a fever and a temperature of 104. ‘When you’re that sick, you don’t give a fuck!” he laughs.
“Desperately Seeking Susan’, with Madonna and Rosanna Arquette was the film that really brought Aidan Quinn to the public’s attention. Especially as a sex symbol. He doesn’t mind being a sex symbol, he says.
“I’m very human. When people of the opposite sex like me, I like it! But I’m shy and don’t like being the centre of attention, unless I’ve had a few drinks.”
This shyness, I could detect, but later when he took to the stage, he became the performer. Shuffled on, cheekily, and took a photograph of the crowd. Took out his mobile phone and checked to see that it was switched off. Everyone laughed and clapped. He leaned back in his seat, obviously enjoying the performance.
Miles Dungan, who was hosting the interview for RTE’s “Rattlebag” mentioned that Aidan once said he didn’t care about his career.
“That was a stupid thing to say,” he said. “But I’m a cat person, I’d be in a corner and you would come over and pet me. Now I’m trying to turn myself into a dog person.” He did begging poses, and the audience giggled.
Did he ever work on a film that he knew wasn’t going to be any good? “Oh yes.
‘The director was very uptight, I knew immediately that the film was fucked.”
‘Once, ‘ he added. ‘I was working with a director who started doing a scene that we had already shot. I said Joe! He said “Will you be quiet? Bloody Americans.” He was actually going senile!”
Aidan has now made more than twenty films. Are there any themes in his work ?
“Deeply tragic and Irish,” he says. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been funnier than when I played Hamlet.”
But he takes the work seriously, even if he doesn’t take himself the same way. He joked about the film that he’s working on now.
“The new film ‘Song for Raggy Boy” is another light comedy!’
But he told me that the subject is very disturbing to him.
“ I play a lay teacher who goes to work in a reformatory school, run by Christian Brothers, in Cork and he starts to twig that what the Christian brothers are doing is immoral and disturbing.”
He himself went to a Christian Brothers school, in Blackrock. Where he was beaten. Was he badly behaved?
“Oh, I was a bit of a messer.”.
Does he see this movie as political, given the current climate?
“Well, sure. But I’m glad it’s something that can be talked about now, in this country. Whereas your friend Sinead was trying to bring this up twelve or thirteen years ago and was practically run out of the country. And she was practically burned as a heretic and now everyone’s talking about it, it’s all coming out. Which is good.”
The collapse of the church, he says, was inevitable. But he doesn’t like the vacuum that’s been created
“I’m not mad about the new Ireland, the Celtic Tiger. I think it’s a very dangerous time right now, for the world and for Ireland in particular. The thing that has saved America is the vastness of the continent, without that the corporate greed and the pollution would have wiped it out. What terrifies me about Ireland is how small the country is and how quickly it can be destroyed. What we are doing, as a species, to the planet and the speed with which we are doing it, we are literally commiting suicide.”
So what can be done?
“You can only talk about it, and try to change your own behaviour. Because it’s not them, it’s us, all of us. We are all hypocrites. The whole way our food is produced now is completely inhuman, it’s very dangerous and all it’s designed to do is make money. It’s not designed to take care of the land, it’s not designed to take care of our bodies.”
Another subject that he takes seriously is autism. He and his wife Elizabeth have a daughter who is autistic and he regularly raises money to promote awareness of the condition.
“Having an autistic child has saved me from neurosis about my career,” he says. “Once you’ve lived through that, silly things like award ceremonies don’t mean all that much.”
He believes that the MMR shots have contributed to the epidemic of autism in Ireland and would love people to be more aware of the links. He has already done a documentary on the subject and says he would love to do a feature film, if a script was offered.
“My daughter was normal until she had the MMR shot,” he says. ‘And then she was suddenly blasted and re-wired.’
His daughter was diagnosed six months before he started work on ‘Benny and Joon”, in which he plays the brother of a mentally retarded girl, with Johnny Depp in the lead.
‘You are mentally and physically exhausted, when you have an autistic child,” he says. ‘Which definitely informed how I played that role. But she’s a great kid and life is wonderful now that she can go to school every day on the bus.”
Family clearly means a great deal, and he hesitates before considering movie roles, because, he says, they really have to be worth it, if they are going to take him away from his wife and children. He lives in New York and wouldn’t move to LA, because Hollywood and it’s obsession with the movie business repels him. He does love actors, though, and has a lot of actor friends, including Johnny Depp.
“When I was working on Michael Collins, Johnny called and said what are you doing? Do you wanna hang with me and Marlon? Marlon Brando! I’m totally in awe of Brando. They were down in Cork, making Divine Rapture. But then when I was on my way, got a call from Johnny saying turn back, the movie’s been cancelled and Marlon’s gone back to the States. I never got to meet Marlon!”
He also loves seeing movies and particularly the new talent, and was looking forward in particular to seeing the new short films. What would happen if an aspiring young film-maker –who wasn’t a relation-approached him with a script. Would he read it?
“Oh yes, absolutely. It may take a while, but I would flip it open and if my attention was caught, I would read on.”
His brother Paul showed him a script which he’d written ten years ago and he was blown away, he says, so much that he broke down and cried. The film was called ‘This is my Father.”
‘I said to Paul ‘I will do anything to help get it made. Four years later, it got made. That was quick! To ever get a movie made is a miracle.”
A woman asked if he has any regrets.
“Being a shallow American, I take the view that all things happen for a reason, and even if it’s not true, I find it comforting!”
“Why do you like being in Ireland?” Someone else asked. “Is it because we’re not star-struck?”
“That’s not true!”, he laughed. “But there’s more crack here and the Guinness is better.”
‘Can I ask a question?’ a girl piped up, from somewhere near the back.
“Go on, then.”
‘Can I come up there and have my photo taken with you?’ The audience cracked up, and the girl ran down to the stage, where Aidan gamely posed and gave her a kiss. Afterwards, outside, she clutched her camera to her chest.
‘Oh my God, he’s gorgeous,’ she said. And he is.
