The seeds of today grow into the plants of tomorrow. The fineness of an artist’s performance can always be traced back to their roots. Some of them acted on stage as a hobby, while some were pushed into it (Like Iain Glenn). Then there are those, like Game of Thrones star Aidan Gillen, who was serious about acting from the start. The veteran actor talked to the Independent in a candid interview about his humble beginnings.
Gillen was the youngest of six kids in Drumcondra. His parents were ‘understandably concerned’ when two of their children decided to become actors. (Aidan and his sister, Patricia Murphy.)
Aidan was in the National Youth Theatre at 14 and never considered anything other than acting. “I didn’t have any other skills, I just about had a secondary school education and a Leaving Cert. But I knew one thing: I didn’t want to work in an office.”
He moved to London at 19 to slowly build up a reputation as a talented performer. “There wasn’t a ton of work and if you were a young, untrained urchin like me, you had to chase it,” he recalled. “I didn’t have any other options, but I was always optimistic. The hustle leads to tiny things, but they weren’t tiny things to me in any way.”
He added, “Very early in my career, I had to wait a long time to get my first paycheque. I felt bad because when I eventually did do a TV show. I bitched a bit about the person who’d ripped me off, or took a long time to pay me, and I had a bit of residual guilt for that because I don’t know what his situation was.”
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