Éanna Hardwicke is a busy man. So much so that it’s a wonder he finds the spare time for an interview at all.
Currently, he’s starring in a National Theatre production of The Playboy of the Western World – alongside heavyweights including Nicola Coughlan and Siobhán McSweeney.
“Everyone in this room has done something with another person before this job,” he says. “It was a strange coming together where we all kind of felt like we knew each other already. It's just been a joy.”
That, and his new film Saipan – in which he plays footballing legend Roy Keane – is just about to come out. It’s a lot, but Hardwicke seems to thrive on the stress.
“I went from shooting a film right into rehearsals for this. There was a week between them.” He pauses. “That's just part of the life of an actor, if you're lucky. We'd all crave to be in that position.”
Especially if you get to play Roy Keane. The film documents the infamous incident where Keane’s squabble with Mick McCarthy (here played by Steve Coogan) saw him removed from the Irish national team during the 2002 FIFA World Cup as they prepared at Saipan.
“When you come from a relatively small city, people like him, they loom really large, and he was a massive figure to me and my brothers,” he says. “I have very early memories of Saipan, [which] I didn't really understand at the time, but I do remember adults telling me what opinion I should have.”
Even 20 years later, Keane’s name is still legendary. How does one embody a figure as well-known, and as much filmed, as he? “Steve [Coogan] and I spoke at length about all this,” Hardwicke says. “None of us had any intention of doing impressions or caricatures or even of thinking about this as a biopic of people's lives.
“It was about focusing on this particular event and embodying our versions of these people. The whole Saipan story has become a myth and so to make a film about it, it is only ever going to be a mythic representation of it... that was very freeing.”
From Cork to Hollywood – it’s been a dizzying ascent for Hardwicke. Raised in Glanmire, he went onto study at the Lir Academy in Dublin, where he made friends with many of the actors who would go onto be his contemporaries, many of whom made the move over to London with him.
“I think coming up as an actor in Dublin was a very nurturing place. It never felt it never felt like anything was off limits,” he says. “It always felt like people were willing to offer you a helping hand and advice and the same has been true coming over here.”
Hardwicke graduated in 2018. Almost immediately afterwards, he landed a role in Normal People – the smash hit adaptation of Sally Rooney’s book, in which Hardwicke played Rob Hegarty.
It also turbocharged the careers of Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, who have gone onto Hollywood careers. Does he feel inspired by their success?
“I don't think about it in those terms so much as I think about, when you see your contemporaries like Paul and Daisy and so many actors from that show go on to do brilliant work… I get very inspired by that creatively,” he says. “Hopefully we all inspire each other and encourage each other.”
He’s also quick to acknowledge the cultural moment Ireland is having on the world stage at the moment: he lists Sally Rooney, Fontaines D.C. and Kneecap as some of the people he gets inspired by, as well as Ireland’s legacy of “writing, storytelling.”
He’s clearly a part of that too. Hardwicke made waves when he appeared as the villainous Ben Field in BBC One show The Sixth Commandment – which he then followed up with a turn as the equally villainous Silas Reed in Paramount+ show The Doll Factory.
And now? “I'd love to do a romantic comedy or something funny,” he says. Knowing him, it won’t be far off. And there’s always the stage.
“It's one of those things you don't want to unpack too much,” he says. “That adrenaline rush is such a fascinating thing. I love the ritual of theatre. I always feel a great joy being in a room with humans on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday night. It’s the closest thing I've got to church.”
Saipan is in cinemas from January 23
