INTERVIEW:Kelly Campbell approaches acting the way her family approaches life – with an enthusiasm for making mistakes and a desire to be truthful. She talks to TARA BRADYabout theatre, film and showing off
DAINTY AND ELEGANTLY presented, it’s difficult to picture Kelly Campbell as a teenage punk. Really? Can such a self-possessed woman really have experienced what she calls “awkward years” of any sort, let alone “awkward years” bedecked in safety pins?
Today, as she stirs her tea in delicate little swirls, she swears to the affirmative.
“It’s true. I couldn’t invite my friends to the house. I just didn’t want to have the conversation. Even on my earliest jobs when they drove me home from a set I always made sure they left me down the road. I didn’t want people thinking, oh yeah, she’s loaded.”
She lowers her voice apologetically. “People don’t like it if you’re too ambitious, I think. Especially in Ireland. And especially when you’re an actor. You have to keep ambition and success hidden, which very often creates a whole other set of work for yourself.”
The early home life of Kelly Campbell was many things, but flash was not one of them. The daughter of Patrick Campbell, who helped reinvigorate the Bewley’s group in the 1990s, Campbell has a clear and guiding recollection of an admonishment dating from an early birthday party.
“I just remember dad taking me aside for showing off,” she says. “It was the first time I was ever aware that it wasn’t good to be precocious about certain things. I never forgot it.”
Dad probably need not have worried. The sort of people who concern themselves with social pages and society diaries might well have had Kelly Campbell pegged as an heiress. Her upbringing, however, spans the lean years of her parents’ empire, years when Patrick and Veronica Campbell risked everything on a catering company operating out of the family home in Swords, Co Dublin.
“When they sunk everything into the business we slept on pull-out mattresses,” she says. “We basically lived together on a factory floor. We all pitched in. When the company had a contract to produce sandwiches for school lunches I remember putting bread down trying to keep pace with the machines.”
Even without the grounding in sandwich-making, Campbell was never destined to be a Hibernian Paris Hilton. Bright, focused and innovative, she seems to occupy the same peculiar dialectic that has defined the larger Campbell dynasty. The family’s accomplishments in the boardroom belie a hugely creative bent; her brother is Duncan Campbell, a renowned artist whose work has featured at London’s Tate Modern and Manifest, the European biennial of contemporary art. Her sister Síofra is a New York-based filmmaker. Her father, now removed from the corporate grind, is a sculptor. “We’re very close as a family,” she says. “My mum and dad have always been a massive influence. I think in recent years, though, we’ve all grown closer. Once dad started training in Florence, it opened up a new, very open side to his personality.”
Were they shocked when he decided to sculpt full time? “Not at all,” she says. “Others probably were. People couldn’t understand why he wasn’t expanding the business further during the boom times. But he was right about that too. It was a very gradual, organic process. He had always painted and was good at it. But as a sculptor he’s exceptional. It was a little accidental at the beginning. He only took a course in sculpting because his teacher wanted him to think about form and classical composition for his painting. But he bloomed at it. He brought all the things and all the drive that make him a good businessman and redirected them into art.”
One might well make the same observation of Campbell. After taking a degree in theatre, history and English at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, she attended the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Returning home and “knowing no one”, she soon put together a proposal for the theatre space in Bewley’s flagship branch on Grafton Street.
“I established it in 1999 with an actor called Michael James Ford,” she recalls. “My brother was running the Bewley’s on Grafton Street at the time. I knew the space was there and really wanted it to be used. So we all started mucking in on lighting and posters and photography. I made a very conscious decision not to act and not to direct because I didn’t want it to be a vanity project. My initial thinking was, I’ll set this up then let it soar. But years later I’m still on the board and still participating because it’s so integral to the business. My mum is on the board as well and I think that has greatly fulfilled her – she has always been so passionate about theatre.”
The space, she says, is entirely in keeping with the Campbell philosophy: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
“It was always about giving people the space to fail. Some of my fondest memories involve people like Mark O’Halloran and Camille O’Sullivan trying stuff out for the first time.”
Following a stint working with “fairies and green screen” on the fantasy series Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg, Campbell signed on for Bachelors Walk where she met Tom Hall, the show’s co-director and co-creator, and her future husband.
“It was a very exciting time,” she says. Watching Tom and the Carney brothers together was amazing. They were just cooking creatively. It was fascinating the way they could fill in each other’s sentences and gaps. John is really sparky with great ideas; Tom is insightful and rigorous and a brilliant editor; Kieran Carney is the comedy. It had to end, in a way. But I’d love for them to work together again some day – Tom and John in particular. They have that very similar sense of humour and they grew up together making films together from the age of 16.”
She credits Hall with dragging her into the movieverse. Veronica Campbell may have ensured a solid education in theatre, but film had never been a big part of the family’s DNA.
“With Tom and I, our relationship has always been about talking about films,” she smiles. “From those first days on set. That’s how I ended up falling for film. I do love theatre. It was my home for 10 years. I love the rehearsal process. I love when it’s just you guys and the director and the script all interrogating each other. But film is so much my thing. Because I come from a photographic background, the technical aspect engages me. And I love the discipline that you have to have as an actor to keep a connection with the material. As an actor, film is far more precious and unique. If you’re doing film it’s a one-off. It’s a one-off character. There’s nobody to compare with. It’s specific for me.”
Unsurprisingly, she’s serious about her craft and sees parallels between her father’s methodology and her own acting.
“We’re both striving to open ourselves up to everything,” she says. “There’s a difference between being real and being truthful. You can fake real. But being truthful is about showing and embracing your vulnerabilities and your ugly side. We’re all so afraid of being vulnerable. We spend our lives numbing ourselves with drugs and alcohol and all sorts to make it go away. But if you numb yourself to fear and anxiety, you also numb yourself to joy.”
She therefore relished the isolation required to shoot Conor Horgan's highly anticipated, award-winning dystopian drama, One Hundred Mornings. Shot on a shoestring budget around an old wooden house on the shores of Lough Dan, the film charts the efforts of two young couples as they attempt to survive the aftermath of an unspecified apocalypse.
“I know I’m going to look back on it as one of the best experiences ever on a film,” says Campbell. “The crew were in a BB at the top of the hill. The cast were in cabins. For the four weeks it was very intense and very long hours. Conor just kept rolling between takes to find just the right look, just the right moment. It made the work much better. There was nowhere to hide. We worked with no breaks and that made you very edgy and tired and prickly and sick of each other.”
She’s also been busy toiling for her other half. Sensation, Hall’s sex comedy about a sheep farmer turned pimp, is scheduled for release this autumn. Was it tricky taking direction from somebody you breakfast with?
“Not at all,” she grins. “Sometimes I’d see a rough cut and the edit and there might be something he had taken out and I’ll say: ‘No, not that bit.’ Then you see him later and he’s like, ‘Yeah, kept that bit in: you were right.’ It’s lovely to be able to talk about that stuff. For me, anyway.”
One Hundred Morningsopens on May 6th
