Nationwide’s Anne Cassin revealed she almost followed in her famous father Barry Cassin’s footsteps to become an actress before making it as an RTE broadcaster.
Her late father was a renowned stage and screen actor and director, best known for bringing John B Keane’s plays to the national stage for the first time, including The Field, as well as his roles in Twelve Angry Men, The Count of Monte Cristo and the TV series Mystic Knights of Tir na nÓg.
And the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, as Anne, who is his eldest daughter, said that she contemplated following his thespian path and completed a year at the Oscar School of Acting before cutting her teeth on radio and TV.
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“There was a bit of a show off in me as well as being shy. So that part of me found expressions in broadcasting,” she told RTE Guide.
“I don’t have any regrets about not embracing acting fully, where you have to totally immerse and become somebody else. I didn’t have the drive to do that. So I bailed from acting school after the first year and I think I made a good choice. I suspect I might have been too uptight to have been a good actress.”
Despite the family history of performance, and being a well known face on the national broadcaster since joining in 1988, Anne said she had to work on overcoming shyness in the early days of her career.
The mother-of-three from Balbriggan, who has been fronting Nationwide for a decade, said:
“I discovered that if you weren’t shy it worked for you a bit better.
“I would still be kind of shy or reserved, but I do recall back then making a decision to put a smile on my face and be upbeat.
“It wasn’t a fake or calculated thing, but more a maturing. I suppose when you’re in your early 20s, you’re still malleable and able to change.”
And whilst she took a different path in the end, it seems the creative genes will live on as the presenter revealed that her own eldest daughter, Ellen, 23, graduated in drama and theatre studies from Trinity College last year.
