Desperatley seeking Susan

Still best known for her stridently sensual portrait of James Joyce’s livelier half and muse in Nora, Newry-born Susan Lynch is feeling guilty when I catch up with her following the premiere of Richard Jobson’s Sixteen Years Of Alcohol.

Having danced the night away afterwards in various drinking emporiums (I was only there to observe and listen to Mr. Jobson’s musings on Hibernian F.C., honest), she’s decided to take refuge in hangover-friendly Rice Krispies, and begins to make those standard girlish compensation promises – “That’s it. I’m definitely going to the gym. I’m going to run it all off. You’ll see. I’ll be good.”
Well, you’d have to believe her. After all, the thirty-two year old actress looks damned good in the nude scenes in Sixteen Years, Jobson’s incredibly dreamy, Wong Kar-Wai inspired love poem to his murdered brother, and the Edinburgh streets from whence the former Skids member came.
“I loved this film,” gushes the absolutely lovely and super-cool Susan. “When I read it, I was so amazed by how original and brave it was. I straight away thought – ‘okay, this will either be really interesting, really brilliant, or the complete opposite’. But then I met Richard, because I had a lot of reservations about the scenes set within a theatre group, which I thought might be naff, and he was so bold and so communicative about what he wanted, that he won me over.”
Sixteen Years, a daringly lyrical journey into punk-era street violence and alcoholism, centers on Kevin McKidd’s troubled, but good-hearted gang member, who temporarily transcends the madness around him through Susan’s ethereal love-interest. The actress, however, was undaunted by her strangely enigmatic role.
“Well, it was easier to work out how to play her from the script,” explains Susan. “I mean, there’s one scene where they meet up in the pub, and she says ‘Yeah, I’m doing fine’, which was originally a four page scene. Now like most artistic types, I’m an absolute control freak, and would normally get annoyed about things ending up on the cutting room floor, but I was really pleased with the results. It’s just one of those roles where the way she moves, the way she’s photographed, is almost more important than anything,” she says.
“There’s that ghostly quality to her, and I was really glad when I saw the finished film, that she also came across like a real person. But it was a really interesting character for me. I went and watched In The Mood For Love on Richard’s say-so, and loved that slow, subtle sensuality, and really wanted to emulate that.”
Although Susan’s first major break came with John Sayles’ The Secret Of Roan Inish in 1994, she’s been acting in movies since she was seven, and on stage long before that. The youngest of five children – and sister to actor John – she and the rest of the Lynch clan are passionate about Gaelic theatre, which proved a great career training ground.
“I always wanted to act,” says Susan, “I mean, I remember sitting in a tree, aged six, thinking, ‘Right, make it happen’. And of course my eldest brother is an amazing actor, so that helped. But it wasn’t just me and John. Everybody in the family did it. My parents are this incredible couple – extremely expressive and great storytellers – so I suspect our acting is something to do with their massive personalities. That, and I really wasn’t very good at anything else, and always liked drifting off into make-believe and fairy-land.”
As the gorgeous bi-lingual daughter of an Irish Dad and an Italian mother, I wonder if she was a fantastically exotic entity growing up in Newry?
“Oh well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she laughs, “I mean, there’s not many Italian families in Newry. My mum knows two, I think. And I have all these cousins that live South of Rome, and it’s weird, because we all look so alike. But that’s why growing up in Newry was a bit of a nightmare.
“I used to get all the teasing about rubber lips and spaghetti-hoop hair. And it’s mad, because I look around now and think that rubber lips aren’t so bad. Look how many people are fucking paying for them!”
Having appeared in films as diverse as Interview With A Vampire, Waking Ned, Beautiful Creatures and From Hell, Susan is obviously keen to avoid being typecast as an earthy muse – or anything else for that matter.
“What’s weird is that in both Casa de Los Babys (which re-unites the actress with director John Sayles) and Enduring Love, which I’m doing in Atlantic City with David Schwimmer, I’m playing really innocent characters and that seems to be how I’m viewed over there – whereas here I get the very strong, ballsy roles. But I love moving between the two.
“That’s what’s brilliant about being an actor, and it just goes to show – I do have a gameplan of sorts. I really want to do different things. I don’t want to be a movie-star. I’m here for the marathon, not the sprint.”
And then the guilty hangover smile returns: “Although it might be only a sprint today, after the Rice Krispies.”

Sixteen Years Of Alcohol is released August 20th