Ian Bannen

...though he was born in Scotland, the star of Waking Ned Devine insisted that we mention that he vacationed in Ireland as a kid. His most recent recognizable role was in Mel Gibson's Braveheart, but Bannen has more than 70 films underneath his belt, with starring roles opposite Sean Connery, Natalie Wood and Paul Newman; and for directors Gibson, Sidney Lumet, John Huston, Richard Attenborough and Sidney Poitier. His sole Oscar® nomination was as a supporting actor opposite Jimmy Stewart in The Flight of the Phoenix.

Cranky: We could talk about a stellar career but there is LOTS of nudity in this flick <VBG>
Ian Bannen: It was very easy at first because they put yellow dressing gowns on as we walked down the beach for the skinny dipping. Then they told everyone but the camera crew to go behind the rocks. But it was much harder on David.

Cranky: We did. And he told us that you do play the lottery
Ian Bannen: Twice a week. My agent does as well. If she wins I get 10 per cent of it.

Cranky: So you see the appeal of it.
Ian Bannen: Yes, but its not really betting. The odds are too enormous. It's something to look forward to. Perhaps you'll win on Saturday, if the Lord looks down on you.

Cranky: Your character, Jackie O'Shea, doesn't have a mean bone in his body.
Ian Bannen: I think he's a schemer, a plotter. He has an imagination that knows no bounds. His pal Michael follows him, like Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote. We're having fun. We've grown old but we've never grown up. Most of all it's about the warmth and tenderness and the community spirit of the village. And it's a real village, it's a wonderful place. I think you come out of the film feeling the world's a better place. Loads of laughs and a few tears. My wife says I've done about 70 films and she can't remember anyone telling me that they'd see it again. Except maybe Braveheart, and that was in Scotland.

Cranky: After so many years in the business how do you view the Hollywood system?
Ian Bannen: Well, it's the center of movies. There's a big industry in India, too. Singing and dancing and colorful sets. It's tougher to make movies in Europe. You can't get the money. The banks seem to throw their money at Mexico and Southeast Asia and Russia, all that go over and flop. And into derivatives, losing vast quantities of money. I don't think they know what they're doing. I wish the heck they'd put the money in films instead. I know that not every film does well, like 1 in 10, but there's much more chance of a film covering itself in video and cable. They'll show anything on cable.

Cranky: Did you have a sense of how wondrous Waking Ned Devine would be when you were making it?
Ian Bannen: It was a wonderful script to read. I was only worried that they wouldn't get the money to make it. Kirk took David Kelly and I to a little village in Ireland where'd they shot Ryan's Daughter. We got there and he said let's rehearse before we go into the village. We went through the script and got to the point where we were feeling pretty knackered and in bed. We'd got two weeks of rehearsal and knew exactly what we were going to do at the end of rehearsal. Sidney Lumet is the only director I've worked with that accomplished anything in rehearsals. The female producer (Glynis Murray) was helpful with the scene with the dead body, where we're trying to put the teeth back in. Its real serious and she says she saw it as a giggly scene. So we tried it that way.

Cranky: You received an Academy Award nomination for The Flight of the Phoenix, with Jimmy Stewart...
Ian Bannen: He was wonderfully funny. He had a habit of biting his tongue when he was eating. The first eccentricity we discovered was that he didn't turn up for the afternoon rehearsals. The director Robert Aldrich got edgy. We wondered if he was in really bad shape. He came back and we said "Where've you been, Jimmy?" He'd been to the doctor. Well why didn't you go to the studio doctor? (and doing a dead on Stewart accent): "Studio doctor? I wouldn't let them file my nails!" There were no girls in the film so we had to create our own fun. So we'd go from one restaurant to another, we got to singing Happy Birthday To You. It wasn't anyone's birthday, but Jimmy would start every 20 minutes or so. Like kids at school, that's how we got. He learned his craft like the British or Europeans do, by acting in a rep theater. Jimmy went from one film to another to another and if you had any talent at all, after a year or two you became a good actor. I think all those marvelous actors and actresses I worked with, they put in some heavy work to get where they were. Not like some writer who had been a lawyer all their lives turning out best sellers.