If she wasn’t such a lovely girl, I’d swear Bronagh Gallagher had struck some terrible Faustian bargain years ago.
Ever since she stomped through her breakthrough role in The Commitments, the 33 year-old has forged a remarkable career, taking in Brit-flicks (Thunderpants, This Year’s Love), Irish productions (Spin The Bottle, The Most Fertile Man In Ireland) and American box-office slayers (Pulp Fiction, Star Wars; The Phantom Menace) along the way.
Though it’s well deserved, in such a fickle industry, one has to wonder how the wee Derry girl has managed it. Even Kate Capshaw can’t match that CV and she’s been sleeping with Spielberg for years.
“I’ve just been very, very lucky with acting,” Bronagh explains. “Just pure luck. I sort of went from job to job and chose a very strange route through it all. Pulp Fiction was just being in the right place at the right time. After The Commitments, a couple of us got representation in LA and it was mostly rubbish. They drive you around to meet about 30 different people but I was never the Hollywood starlet those people wanted. The only time I ever fitted into anybody’s blueprint was with Tarantino. He was the man. Bring on the freaks! Bring out the people, now deemed shells, whose career is over. But he is unique. He’s such a wonderful director and such a nice bloke. It was the only time I didn’t feel like the odd one out over there.”
Bored with the Hollywood experience, Bronagh returned to Dublin to tread the boards and do some proper acting.
“I’ve only even done what interests me,” she says. “And I love theatre. I love the variety of going between an absurd play and an Irish classic. I loved working at the Abbey and then the Royal Court in London. I just want to do new things all the time and meet nice people, so it suits me down to the ground.”
Still, she has somehow managed to maintain a whirlwind of career interests. In 2004, she released Stolen Moments, a countrified cosmic soul record with echoes of Emmylou. She continues to tour, while squeezing in the movies, including her role as a fighter pilot for George Lucas’ quasi-religious franchise.
“See, that’s luck again,” she exclaims. “And pure brass neck. They had already cast all the main parts when I called up my agent and asked if there was any chance I could play an ewok or a wee Storm trooper. She laughed at me down the phone but she made the call and the casting agent had seen me in a play I had been in the night before. I literally just went up for the craic and they put the costume on me and away we went. It was a very technical job because of the blue screen, but George Lucas is a really patient, gentle man. You can tell he’s a man of stature in the film world, one who takes a lot of time to make his movies. So it was all very relaxed.”
Today, at the end of a long day’s shoot for new comedy-horror flick Thirteen, you can understand how Ms Gallagher has kept so many balls in the air. Even at this late hour, she’s a firecracker, with more energy than most can muster after an intravenous expresso. You can see how such a lively presence has set her apart in a profession renowned for diva tendencies. Sure enough, when I ask about her role in Tristan And Isolde, she primarily remembers all the good friends she made on set.
“Well, me and Sophia (Myles) and Rufus (Sewell) all became great friends. I stay with Sophia whenever I’m in London now and we have a ball. That’s the main reason I still like doing films. At a certain point in your life you think you’ve made all the friends you’re ever going to have, but you’ll always meet somebody new and really lovely.”
Inspired by the tragic Celtic myth, Kevin Reynolds’ Tristan and Isolde sees an Irish princess (Sophia Myles) and English knight (James Franco) locked in star-crossed romance, aided by Bronagh’s earthy handmaiden, Bragnae.
“Those bloody dresses,” cries Bronagh. “I was walking up and down beaches in Connemara pulling half the beach with me like a human digger. Plus there was this enormous head dress and with all this clobber on, you have to get up on a massive horse and pretend you are a fecking Irish champion. It was not a glamour shoot.”
She did, however, get to roll around naked with Sophia and James in one scene.
“That was hysterical. It took 27 takes. I’m a messer at the best of times but me and Sophia were cracking up for that. We couldn’t get it together. In the end the director separated us like school children and I had to do my bit on my own. And me, looking, like Pegeen Magoo. Very erotic.”