Brendan Gleeson can’t stop talking. Materialising on my laptop screen, the Oscar-nominated star of The Banshees of Inisherin and Harry Potter sails through twinkly-eyed anecdotes and impassioned detours about parenting, the Northern Ireland peace process, and toxic masculinity. He apologises for “going on a bit”, then immediately goes on a bit more. It’s great.
Far from the grouchy or mean men he's often inhabited, Gleeson is gentle and gregarious. We’re discussing H is for Hawk, Philippa Lowthorpe’s sensitive adaptation of Helen Macdonald’s bestselling memoir, in which Gleeson’s patriarch dies early but hovers over every frame. It’s led us on to the difference between the Irish approach to death and that of the English. This takes the Dubliner back to the funeral of a friend – Anthony Minghella, who directed Gleeson in Cold Mountain five years before he died in 2008.
