Rising Star Clare Dunne

Actress Clare Dunne played a blinder in gangland drama Kin, but tells Andrea Smith that some family members were more impressed by her Pirate Queen role.

“I think it’s so weird to have to watch yourself on a big screen,” laughs actor Clare Dunne, who admits to being “terrible” when it comes to judging herself on camera.

“Looking at the actual shape of your nose and your chin and your jowls and your eyebrows and your head - oh my God, it’s just so much. But after the initial shock, once I've seen it a couple of times, I can move my brain away from all of that and watch the story.”

It may seem that Clare dramatically exploded into the nation’s hearts recently when the RTÉ gangland drama Kin aired to chill our collective bone marrow. The talented Dublin actress who plays the gutsy Amanda Kinsella assures Woman’s Way that her star has ascended far more gradually. While the antics of the Kinsella family made for compulsive Sunday night viewing, the eight-part series debuted just as Clare’s brilliant film on domestic abuse, Herself, was released in cinemas.

“It feels slightly different now when I go out for walks or sit in restaurants,” she admits, in acknowledgment of the fact that people are recognising her in a way that they didn't before.

BIRTHMARK

Clare has a distinctively fabulous appearance thanks to a small birthmark under her left eye. When she started her acting career, it was suggested that she should cover it up when going for roles, but she ultimately chose not to camouflage it.

“I decided I wasn't going to spend an extra hour doing makeup because it wasn't getting me the roles and was just wasting my time,” she says. “I feel that if they want me, great, and if they don’t, well they aren't the people to work with - it’s as simple as that really. And on a very practical level, you can't really cover up my birthmark because it’s basically 3D and sticks out a bit.”

Clare feels that the world has evolved now to where it is not as interested as before in people looking a certain way. Did the birthmark bother her during her teenage years, when the pressure to look like everyone else is more acute?

“Only the odd time when I got a bit bullied for it,” she says. “It was hilarious really as people would say things like, “Who hit you?” and “Jaysus, what happened to you?” So I got really good at comforting people in socially awkward moments.”

Now in her 30s, Clare grew up on the southside of Dublin as the eldest of six girls. She wasn’t a typical stage school kid, and credits her mum Angie’s instinct with paving the way to her future in drama.

“I was actually very shy,” she recalls. “When I was 12, my mother asked me what my favourite thing to do was, and I told her that I liked making people laugh and telling stories to my mates. She thought she should send me to a drama class, and it was the making of me.”

The drama school in Churchtown that Clare attended was run by the late Maeve Widger, and she discovered a talent for singing there and enjoyed improvisation.

She was unsure about whether acting was a “real job” when considering her career choices, and tested the waters by embarking on a performance course that incorporated a stage management module Clare was encouraged by a director to consider going on to drama school, and was accepted to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. The writing seeds were planted there, because students had to write and perform a piece for their end-of-year assessment.

Clare wrote a piece that she ultimately developed into a show called Living With Missy and put on at Smock Alley Theatre after graduating in 2009. She went on to work solidly in theatre for around five years, and was delighted to work with Druid Theatre Company and the UK’s National Theatre.

One of the drawbacks of acting is being at the mercy of others’ decisions and schedules, and Clare supplemented her income when she wasn't acting by working in bars and temping as a receptionist. “I wouldn't be anywhere without Sigmar Recruitment,” she jokes.

ACTING CAREER

During a lull in acting roles, she decided to write the film Herself. It was conceived initially as a vehicle for her to act in, but Clare found herself invigorated by the process and having a sense of control over her work. “I hadn't gotten a job in film so I thought it might be the only way I was

going to get into the industry,” she admits.

“If you're waiting around hoping for something to happen, you can end up dwindling a bit and feeling like you're wasting your time on the planet. Once I started writing and researching, I began to feel the empowerment of having focus in my day. I wasn't getting paid for any of it at first, but it gave me a sense of meaning and was so enlightening.”

Herself received development funding from the Irish Film Board in 2016, and Catastrophe star Sharon Horgan came on board as producer with her Merman production company, alongside Element Pictures. Acclaimed English film director and producer, Phyllida Lloyd, who directed Mamma Mia! in 2008 and The Iron Lady in 2011, was the film’s director. Clare first met Phyllida when she worked with her on a stage production of Julius Caesar, and it had a profound effect on her. Watching Phyllida in action made her realise that actors could do more than sit around and wait on parts. “We could also do all sorts of deadly community work and be part of activism, and we could try to change the stories we're telling in the world,” she points out.

“I think once my eyes were opened, it shifted my consciousness around my choices of roles. I was like, ‘That story is about a woman who is raped and left in a ditch and the rest of it seems to be about all the guys - and that's not great actually.’”

Clare feels that this growing realisation led to her wanting to tell the story of Sandra in Herself, which is about a young mother who escapes her abusive husband and fights back against a broken housing system. Sandra sets out to build her own home and in the process rediscovers herself and rebuilds her life.

Herself premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020 and has been very well received at home, with Clare and her co-writer, Malcolm Campbell, winning an IFTA award for best film script in 2021. Herself is poised to bring Clare’s talent to an even wider audience as Amazon Studios have bought the US distribution rights to the film. Kin is also going to air Stateside as streaming service AMC+ acquired the rights for North America, Australia, New Zealand, Iberia, Latin America and the UK, and it was pre-sold to on-demand service Viaplay in Scandinavia.

PLAYING AMANDA

Clare is among Kin’s stellar cast of Irish actors, which includes Aidan Gillen, Ciarán Hinds, Sam Keeley, Emmett Scanlan and Maria Doyle Kennedy. It follows the lives of the Kinsellas, a fictional Dublin family embroiled in a gangland war, and Clare plays grieving mother Amanda, whose teenage son is murdered in the first episode.

The actress found playing the role “phenomenal,” and loved that Amanda is a character who represents real women, in that she is deep, capable and strong. “She is able to handle so much stuff coming at her, as mothers do when they have a few kids and are working as well,” she says.

“She’s also managing herself in this really powerful dynamic family where she's not seen as a true insider, and dealing with that all the time might take a lot of energy.

I think Amanda is like a lot of women who have a talent or innate intelligence that's never really gotten a chance to show itself off, and now she gets to use her brain and instincts in a new way.”

Clare signed last year with United Talent Agency in the US, which represents Harrison Ford, Gwyneth Paltrow, Johnny Depp and Wes Anderson. She doesn't like to talk about her personal life, but what we do know is that her partner is Jack Nolan, who played Michael Hennessy in the Virgin Media drama series Red Rock and Will Noble in the BBC medical drama Casualty.

“We help each other a lot with self-tapes, and we both understand the nature of acting being a ‘gig’ world,” is as much as she’ll proffer.

Clare’s a little more forthcoming about her family, to whom she is very close, saying that they’re all very supportive. While her parents and sisters can watch her performances - which include small roles in Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) and The Last Duel (2021) - she starred as Granuaile the Pirate Queen in children’s programme, X Marks the Spot, which aired on RTÉ 2 recently.

Clare was delighted to take on the role in the heart-warming tale about the importance of being yourself, even when you feel the pressure to blend in.

“My nieces and nephews never get to see me in anything, so my main reason for taking the part was so they could watch it,” she says.

The actress was also pleased that she got to bring her parents along with her on her recent appearance on RTÉ's Late Late Show, and explains that her father Paul reads all of her reviews and knows everything that’s going on in the acting industry. “He’ll say, ‘You’re doing grand,’ so he’s my barometer for the media,” she laughs.

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