Angeline Ball earns wide acclaim for playing Molly Bloom. But don't mention 'The Commitments', writes Michael Dwyer
When Bloom, Sean Walsh's new film version of Ulysses, had its world première at the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily last year, the critic for the leading film trade paper, Variety, singled out Angeline Ball's remarkable portrayal of Molly Bloom. Noting the skill with which she connects with Joyce's dialogue, the reviewer commented that she "revels in Molly's intense sexuality and knows how to enjoy every physical craving". Later last year, at the Irish Film and TV Awards in Dublin, Ball was nominated as best film actress for Bloom and best TV actress for the series, Any Time Now, and she won both awards. Coincidentally, her fellow nominees for best film actress were Maria Doyle Kennedy and Bronagh Gallagher, her co-stars in her début film, The Commitments, in 1991.
"I felt I let myself down at the awards that night," Ball said on a visit home for the recent Dublin International Film Festival screening of Bloom. "I was still breast-feeding my daughter, Katie, and I had no time to get anything together. That was my first night away from Katie since she was born. I looked at the list of awards and there were so many of them, but they went straight into the award for best actress in a TV drama.
"When they called out my name and I had to go up on stage, I was so nervous. Give me lines any day! I just said, 'Thank you very much', and I walked off."
Then it was a long wait until the award for best actress in a film, and I thought: 'Even God couldn't be that good to me'. And my name was called out again."
Now based in London, she lives with her partner, Patrice, a French graphic designer. "We met through Bronagh, would you believe?" she says. You can't get away from The Commitments. Her brother, Paul, is a graphic designer and he and Patrice studied in Brighton together. We actually met on a slow boat to Greenwich. There was a big group of us - Paul had brought his friends and Bronagh had brought me and some other friends. Patrice and I have been together five years now."
Having taken a year off since the birth of Katie, she is eager to get back to acting now. As far back as she can remember, she says, she wanted a career in show business. "I knew for a long time that I fulfilled myself creatively. I could sing and I could dance. That was my bread and butter for a while. It's a different business now when you get Pop Idols and all sorts of flash-in-the-pan types.
"When I was 16, you still had Sunday Night at the Olympia and other variety shows, so you could get your foot in the door. I got a gig dancing and then when they found out I could sing, they asked to me to do that, too. I never considered myself terribly ambitious, but I placed myself in the right spots."
She caught the eye of casting agents Ros and John Hubbard, and when Alan Parker came to Dublin to prepare for shooting The Commitments, they told Angeline Ball that she would be ideal to play Imelda Quirke, one of the three girl singers in the band. "I read the book and I became really keen to do the film. It was really tough, though. I'll never forget the huge queue at the Mansion House on the first day of the auditions. Then there were so many rounds of auditions. Alan was determined to get the right mix of people, so he spent a lot of time juggling everyone around until he was happy with it.
"It was a great experience, really special to get a part like that when you're just 22 and you've never made a film before. It was a bit of a shock at first, because it was such hard work from early morning every day. If you did an ad, which was all I was used to, you shot for two days and then went home and that was it.
"Alan was lovely to us. If you needed a heavy hand, he would give it, but if you needed encouragement, he was always there. It was a surprise to all of us when it did so well, because we felt we were doing this little film. I couldn't believe it when I was told we were all going to America for the premières in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, but the Dublin première was really nerve-wracking, although it was an amazing night."
She shrugs off persistent reports of a Commitments sequel. "I get these phone calls about once every year asking me about a sequel. The other call I hate getting is for one of those where-are-they-now features about the cast of The Commitments. I'm not Imelda Quirke and I don't want to be getting those calls when I'm 40 - or when I'm 60."
In the 12 years between The Commitments and Bloom, she has worked steadily in film and television. Her TV work has included Any Time Now, The Bombmaker, Our Friends in the North, a new version of A Christmas Carol, and the German drama, Terror in the Mall. She made her Hollywood debut with a supporting role in the 1994 sequel, My Girl 2; worked in Hungary on Karoly Makk's 1997 film of Dosteovsky's The Gambler, which starred Michael Gambon; and featured in the cast of the 1999 US indie, The Auteur Theory, set at a student film festival where a killer is picking off the young directors one by one.
"I've been busy," she says. "I could have been busier, I suppose; . . . I think I was a bit scared to make some choices, but I've been ticking over." She is particularly pleased with the 1996 British drama, Brothers in Trouble, in which she co-starred with Om Puri. "It was the forerunner of East is East and all those Asian movies set in England. It was about illegal immigrants to Britain in the 1960s and I was in this house with 18 Asian men.
"We did a lot of workshops together beforehand, which was new for me and taught me a lot of acting, preparing all the history of my character and her state of mind at different times. It wasn't very commercial, but it was such a good experience and it was nice to play someone who wasn't a bit glamorous after playing Imelda."
Back home, she joined Richard Harris, Stephen Rea, Stuart Townsend and Brendan Gleeson in Trojan Eddie, and she was reunited on screen with Maria Doyle Kennedy when John Boorman cast them as sisters in a ménage à trois with Dublin criminal Martin Cahill (played by Brendan Gleeson) in The General.
"The world première at Cannes was a great night," she recalls. "We were having champagne on the rooftop of a hotel and looking down on the crowds and all the cars before going up the red carpet. I was doubled over with nerves because I still hadn't seen the film. I loved working with Brendan. He's such a charismatic man - he's attractive even when he's dressed as Martin Cahill. He really inhabited that character. You could feel that on the set."
In Bloom, Ball co-stars with Stephen Rea as Leopold Bloom and Hugh O'Conor as Stephen Dedalus. It's her third time working with Rea, following Trojan Eddie and the 2000 production of The Plough and the Stars, directed by Rea, who also played Fluther, with Ball cast as Mrs Gogan.
"I was very proud of my work in the play," she says, "and after that, I think, Stephen felt I would be right to play Molly in Bloom. When Sean Walsh contacted me to audition for the part, I thought it must have gone really badly because he didn't really say anything afterwards and I didn't hear from him for two months or so.
"Then he called and said I had the part, and the panic set in. I thought: 'I don't want to do it now', which is always my way of sabotaging myself. I was worried about the material, which is very strong, but Patrice told me not to worry. I decided it was going to be my swansong or the making of me. I also decided I would have a baby afterwards and assess my life and see where I am. Then, lo and behold, Patrice and I came back from a holiday in Rhodes and I discovered I was pregnant - the day before I was to start shooting Bloom."
Although she was getting sick in the mornings and feeling sore from being squeezed into corsets, she threw herself into the role of Molly Bloom. "I went into the part with full gusto. I worked hard at trying to bring her out of the book and bring her to life in all her earthiness and sensuality. I told Sean I didn't want any nudity in it because I think it's always best left to the imagination. It wasn't me being a prude or anything like that. I just felt it was more effective and more sensual to have Molly referring to the sex, to her breasts and to her body in that little cheeky manner of hers.
"I also felt sorry for her in a way because she and Bloom were living in this frozen relationship that they had learned to live in. I don't think it was going to get any worse. There are just a few scenes in the whole film where Molly and Bloom are actually speaking to each other. They're still living together, knowing what they know about each other, and there's something sad about that. What Stephen and I worked at was the way they lived between each other's lives, and that spoke volumes."
In the film she delivers Molly Bloom's famous soliloquy with passion and sensuality. "Sean had asked me to record it as a rough version, so we had it as a guide track for the film. I went into this little sound booth and just wound it off. I knew that I'd go back and do it again when I got into the character of Molly and physically became her. But when I did, I couldn't do it as well. There was something about that first take that worked. It felt so fresh that we were able to use it apart from making a few minor changes."
She describes Walsh as a wonderful director with boundless enthusiasm. "He worked wonders with such a small budget. So many people didn't want to know when they heard he was doing this book, but he was just marvellous. He was completely open to suggestion and full of energy from the start of the shoot to the end, no matter what came up against him. We couldn't afford huge sets or anything like that, but he was able to make so much happen out of so little.
"I also think Stephen was fabulous in it, and so easy to work with. He puts me at ease right away and I completely trust him. He's a brilliant actor and a very hard worker. He sets a very high standard, and if you don't go up to that mark with him, you get lost."
• Bloom opens next Friday