She's the kitchen hand-turned-movie extra who is (probably) the most famous background artist in the world right now.
As we countdown to Oscars night next Sunday, the film trailer for The Banshees of Inisherin – up for nine gongs – is clocking up millions more views around the globe. And slap bang in the middle of all the trailer action, enjoying a singalong next to Brendan Gleeson’s character Colm Doherty playing the fiddle in JJ DeVine’s pub, is Achill islander, Lisa Cattigan.
While many of the 140 extras cast for Martin McDonagh’s blockbuster didn’t make a single scene, lucky Lisa was in a handful – and was among the only non-stars to enjoy a trailer close-up. In the opening scene, Lisa and her pal Grainne O’Hagan smile and wave at Colin Farrell’s character Padraic Suilleabhain, as they pass him along the wild Atlantic Drive.
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Next, Lisa appears in JJ Devine’s pub, perched next to Brendan Gleeson, in the middle of a session, singing and clapping along as he plays the fiddle. And when Kerry Condon’s Siobhan sets off for the mainland from Purteen Pier, Lisa pops up again, carrying a basket of fish.
Lisa, 43, who lives in Dooagh, on Achill Island with partner Allan McGee, was “over the moon” when she was cast for three days’ filming at Purteen Pier – and invited back for more.
“After Purteen, they asked if I’d like to go up to the Atlantic Drive to do the pub scenes so I rang up by boss, Teresa McNamara, to say: ‘sorry, I’m not coming back to work, I’ve a few more weeks of this’,” said Lisa, who works in the kitchen at Achill Cliff House Hotel.
“Teresa was like: ‘no problem at all – go!’ She was over the moon for me.”
Lisa’s identical twin sister Laura also sent in her headshot when notices went up calling for Banshees extras – but sadly missed out when she missed the phone call from central casting. “The first time I saw Colin Farrell do his bit was at Purteen Pier,” said Lisa of meeting the Hollywood star.
“I was standing with a fella looking out to the sea and when I saw Colin, I twirled around to look and Robbie (in the crew) shouted: ‘Oi, the view is that way!’ – and I told him, ‘but I prefer the view this way!’.”
But top of Lisa’s wish list from the outset was to meet Brendan Gleeson – one of her favourite actors. “Braveheart is one of my favourite films of all time,” she gushes.
“I was telling all the extras ‘I just want to see Brendan’.” Every morning at 5am, extras arrived at a marquee in Keel, where they had their breakfast before getting into costume and make-up.
They were then bused to filming locations. “On the extras bus, when I spotted Brendan getting into the car, I started screaming like a banshee – everyone was laughing at me,” remembers Lisa.
An hour later, she was sat next to her hero in JJ Devine’s. “It was the luck of the draw as we were at the front of the bus and Robbie said ‘you, you and you’.
“My poor friend had to bring her handbag back to the bus and couldn’t get back into the scene. They have a fake fire in the pub and I asked the assistant director if I could sit by the fire and then Brendan Gleeson sat beside me on the couch.
“Everyone else was laughing at me as they knew how mad I was about him. They said: ‘you got your wish!’. I was so nervous and starstruck, I couldn’t even look at him.
“Then I said: ‘come on Lisa, you better talk to this man’. He was tuning his fiddle and I told him we’d a mutual friend, Paul McGrattan, a great trad musician and friend of Brendan and he told me Paul tried to get him a house in Dooagh.
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“I told him he’d love Lourdie’s across the road. I was messing, telling him ‘you should come in with your fiddle to play us a few tunes’.
“The next day, I was in the pub scene and I shouted over: ‘There’s my work buddy’ at Brendan and told him: ‘Ach, you missed out in the pub last night, it was free drink because the owner got married.’ He knew all about it. We’d great craic. I was buzzing.”
Lisa continues: “There was a singalong and we had to sing the chorus, then the cameras got closer. I didn’t know the song and I was saying ‘Jesus, what’re the words?’
“I’d a couple of days with Brendan and then it was like I knew him forever. I felt so sorry for my friend, stuck on the bus for the few hours.
“When I saw myself on the trailer, I knew I’d made the movie. I couldn’t believe it. When Brendan and Colin were on the Late Late Show, they showed the trailer – I even made the Late Late Show.”
Lisa and pal Gráinne O’Hagan were thrilled to discover their acting debut made the opening scene.
She said: “Me and Gráinne got to wave at Colin on the road. When they said ‘cut’ we looked over, making faces at Colin, skitting with him, making him laugh.”
“When we saw Colin later up at the bar scene, he said : ‘Oh, it’s you ladies, you’re back again’.”
Afterwards, Martin McDonagh thanked Lisa and Grainne and confessed, of all his films, Banshees was his favourite.
Lisa also reveals a coincidence involving Gleeson. “I had to laugh as my brother was an extra in The Guard, down in Connemara, years ago and he’s a picture of him up at the bar with Brendan Gleeson in a scene that never made that movie.
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“When I told him about my pub scene, he laughed: ‘But you mightn’t make the movie…’. Now I slag David, saying: ‘how do you feel I made the scene with Brendan and you didn’t?
“He lives in Australia now and went to see it there and he said he wanted to scream in the cinema: ‘There’s my island!’ and when I came on, he wanted to shout: ‘and that’s my sister?’
“A lot of the extras said to me ‘you’re the lucky one’,” says Lisa. “I have the film on DVD and I counted, I’m five times in it.”
“We got paid to watch them at work. I’d have paid money to do it.”
Whether Lisa makes an appearance at next weekend’s glittering Oscars remains to be seen…
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