But Robert Sheehan makes perfect sense as an actor: he's too mouthy and too pretty to be a civilian. The Portlaoise man, famous for his turn as a Misfit with an Asbo and a superpower, tells TARA BRADYabout killing Bono, but not actually meeting him
ROBERT Sheehan stretches out on the couch in his new red trousers. His decadent choice of apparel makes him look even more impish than usual.
At 23 he’s no longer a teenager, but that tousle of curls and his penchant for on-screen rebels ensures a lingering aura of adolescence. If he looks like something from a Germaine Greer coffee-table book, there is, he suspects, a reason.
“I was the small fella for a while,” he says with a characteristically flamboyant wave. “I played football for Portlaoise until I was 14 or 15. And then, suddenly, everybody shot up and I was too short for the team. I caught up about a year later. By sixth year I was hitting five-eleven or six feet. But just at that pivotal moment in puberty, I fell behind. It was an awful hindrance with the girls.” He grins from his repose: “Not that I can complain.”
These days the Offaly-born actor can't walk down a street without being accosted by eager females. It's a Misfitsthing, he says. His turn as Nathan Young – a cocksure Robin Goodfellow with an Asbo and superpowers – was the star attraction of the Bafta-winning E4 show.
"It must be big here," he says, "because a lot of people seem to come up on the street about it in Dublin. In London I usually get 'You're that guy from Skins, innit?'"
Robert Michael Sheehan swears he doesn’t know how he got here. His upbringing in Co Laois, though “lovely”, was anything but show business. “My dad is a retired guard and my mum was the registrar for births and deaths for the Midland Health Board. My lovely sister is doing her Master’s in finance and accounting. My brother owns two companies. I make no sense at all.”
He has no formal training. Indeed, before landing his first film role in 2004's Song for a Raggy Boy, his only acting credit was as the lead in a school production of Oliver.
"It was called Oliver with a Twist, actually," he recalls. "My teacher was a great one for the puns. I was so enthusiastic about it that my parents brought me to the Raggy Boyauditions a couple of years later. And from there I fell arseways in to the business."
It’s no wonder Robert Sheehan followed his bottom. In person he seems far too pretty and mouthy for civilian life. He tried his hand at university but dropped out after a year of film school at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.
“I kept getting acting work,” he shrugs. “So what else I was I going to do? College wasn’t right for me.”
Since then, domestic movies such as Summer of the Flying Saucerand Cherrybombhave kept Sheehan off the streets – but television has made him a household name. Across the water, the erstwhile star of Red Ridingmay be the last best hope for Hip Hibernia. At home he'll soon be dodging Aidan Gillen in the second season of RTÉ's Love/Hate.
“You can always work as an actor,” says Sheehan. “There’s a perception that actors don’t work, but it’s actually as stable as any other job. If you’re an innovative person, wherever you are you’ll find work. People come up to me and ask me ‘how do you get in to acting?’ Go perform something on the street. If you really like acting you’ll act somewhere. There are no limitations. There will always be backs of pubs. Don’t be afraid to make a cock of yourself, as Sean Connery might say.”
Sheehan's nonchalance has served him well. His 2011 kicked off with Season of the Witch, a major film featuring him, Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman as beleaguered 14th-century knights.
“It was a very, very luxuriant production indeed,” purrs Sheehan. “Everything was extravagant and mind-boggling in terms of time and resources. We shot in the Alps. I thought they were going to move them. It was -16 when he shot in Hungary. My family came out to visit me and nearly died of the cold. But we had our five-star hotels.”
He was less comfortable with the studio lust for numbers. "When I was doing interviews in America journalists kept asking me about Season of the Witchtotals. It had opened well but wasn't doing so well in the second week. Was I worried? What was I going to do? Seasonwas shot when I was 20: that's three years ago. I don't know anything about box office and stuff like that. Once it's made and passed on to the distributors it's theirs to sell. I'm not Nic Cage. I'm not the guy in the poster. I have the luxury of not caring. And I never want to care. Once you do you become a studio executive, not an actor."
Killing Bono, he says, is different. "It's the one I do want people to like." Based on journalist Neil McCormack's account of growing up alongside his infinitely more famous Mount Temple school chum, director Nick Hamm's film escalates the gentle rock rivalry of I Was Bono's Doppelgängerinto a full-blown caper.
"The memoir was just a starting point. Neil McCormack has already written in the Daily Telegraphabout Nick calling him up to say 'Darling, your life doesn't have a third act, so we're going to give you one'."
In Killing Bono, Sheehan and Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian) essay Ivor and Neil McCormack, a sibling-based act swallowed up by the great Irish rock gold rush of the 1980s. Suffice to say, the McCormacks do not become the next U2.
“They kept us away from the real McCormack brothers,” says Sheehan. “We met them near to the end of filming, They make a cameo in a scene set in a strip club. They were lovely but we were performing as them so it was bit awkward, to be honest. Sorry boys. We’ve spiced up your life and we’re doing your songs.”
The resulting tintamarre was, alas, not all Robert Sheehan’s own work.
“I can plough through chords on a guitar,” he says apologetically. “But I played tin whistle and banjo growing up, so guitar is not my main thing. I used to play tin whistle in the pub on a Monday night when I was a kid. There was a big gang of us, so I’d do a bit of whistle and banjo and bodhrán. The principal of the school always let me come in late on Tuesdays, because he knew I was playing the pub until all hours.”
The eponymous rock god, we are told, has given the thumbs-up to the Ulster-made project, though for Sheehan he remains as distant as ever.
"I've still never been in the same room as U2. It'd be nice. I'm a big fan. Especially the early stuff, like Boyand The Joshua Tree. But now I'm in the film where someone is trying to kill them."
Bono will have to wait. For the moment there are half a dozen film engagements in the offing for Sheehan, including Suicide Kidswith Ashley Walters and the title role in David Baddiel's upcoming Romeo and Gertrude. There is also the small matter of nailing his driving licence.
“I’ve got my learner permit. I was on holiday in Cambodia recently and this French bird ordered me to drive her around on a dune buggy. If I can survive Phnom Penh city on a dune buggy I reckon I can transfer those skills.”
He stretches out a little further on the couch. “Otherwise I’ll just have to go everywhere in a dune buggy.” You have been warned.
