Go to the "The Van" Page

All He Has to Do Is Act Naturally

For Colm Meaney, The Roles Just Roll In

LOS ANGELES -- It's hard not to feel a twinge of disappointment when actor Colm Meaney shows up for breakfast and asks for coffee and a croissant.

Somehow you expected a smoke and a pint of Guinness.

But if there's one thing the Irish-born journeyman actor has learned to do, it's adapt. Not many actors move from Dublin to Broadway to Hollywood and back again. Fewer still manage to star in TV series like "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and maintain enough credibility to be pursued by such respected film directors as Alan Parker and Stephen Frears.

Meaney does, and without much apparent effort. Which is not to say without any effort. Last winter he commuted between Dublin and Los Angeles, dividing his time between "Star Trek" and Frears's "The Van," a low-budget film in which he plays an on-the-dole Irishman who goes into business with a buddy, selling fish and chips from an abandoned van.

This summer he appears in "Con Air," playing a DEA agent chasing a planeload of airborne bad guys (John Malkovich, Nicolas Cage and Steve Buscemi) in Buena Vista's mega-budget, high-voltage production.

Last week he finished playing a shepherd on England's Isle of Man in the no-budget "Owd Bob." Next week he's off to Boston to play a Mafia heavy in Ted Demme's "Noose." "Star Trek" picks up again in August.

Some actors might find this disorienting. Not Meaney. "I'm not a big method actor. I'm much more superficial," he says. There is a pause, but not for ironic effect. He simply adds, "It is a nightmare for the schedulers."

This uncomplicated attitude is undoubtedly part of what is attractive about Meaney to audiences and to his moviemaking peers. Among both he has earned a following for portraying regular guys who are fierce but fair, tough on the outside but tender at heart. In "The Van," the third in a trilogy based on novels by Irish writer Roddy Doyle (the first was "The Commitments," the second, "The Snapper"), Meaney plays Larry, a lovable, beer-swilling loafer whose friendship with Bimbo (Irish actor Donal O'Kelly) is tested by their portable venture into fish and chips. In "Star Trek," where it may be hard to seem like a regular guy, Meaney plays the tenaciously honest Chief Engineer Miles O'Brien, defending the spaceship from Kardassians with unalloyed loyalty.

What's more, at 43 Meaney looks like anything but a Hollywood star. On the set he might be mistaken for one of the crew. His hands, large and heavy, are those of a worker; his fingers are stubby and thick. Under a dark thatch of corkscrew curls, Meaney has jowls and a ruddy complexion, two tufts of eyebrows, a pug nose and flapping, cabbage ears. Not the face of a typical leading man, but a friendly, familiar one; it's the sort of face you might trust in a dark alley, or go drinking with at 10 in the morning.

Of course right now he's polishing off the croissant and draining the coffee. Do you mind if he smokes, he earnestly asks.

"Colm's not the sort of person to hole himself up in his trailer," says director Parker, who first brought Meaney to the American public's eye in "The Commitments." The actor played the rabble-rousing head of a musical Irish family. "Colm's fundamental appeal is one of accessibility. There is an almost unveiled honesty about him; he plays the roles without self-conceit. Never ever does he have pretensions of being superior to the audience, which makes him instantly likable, and makes the audience comfortable with him."

"Con Air" director Simon West juggled the calendar of his mega-production to allow for Meaney's other projects. "There was pressure not to use him because he had so many scheduling problems, but I thought it was important," says West. "Colm has this roguish twinkle in his eye, so that even if he's spouting reactionary theories on how to deal with prisoners, you listen to him -- and he entertains you at the same time."

It's no different on television, his colleagues there say. "Colm has a certain Everyman quality to him so that whether doing `The Van,' `The Snapper,' `Star Trek' or the zillion films he's made, there is that certain trustable, unthreatening and remarkably believable character that's always been there," says "Deep Space Nine" executive producer Rick Berman. "He was blessed with a miraculous talent for acting so well and so effortlessly."

It's easy to forget that none of this necessarily came naturally to Meaney, one of four sons of a bread-truck driver in urban Dublin. His father hoped he might go into a more stable profession, but from early on Meaney dreamed of being like Steve McQueen and Robert Mitchum. He took drama classes at his Catholic high school and won a place at the Irish National Theatre's Abbey Theatre School, where students apprenticed in national productions. Still a teen, he moved to London, where he worked in the theater for 10 years, and in 1982 moved to New York, setting his sights on Broadway. But he ended up, instead, at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland, eventually working his way back to off-Broadway and then Broadway (with a stint on "One Life to Live") and a role in the American production of "Nicholas Nickleby."

But Meaney eventually tired of the pretension of the theater -- the last straw came when a director asked him to play a role in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" "like Mick Jagger," Meaney recalls. He puffs on a Camel. "I thought, `What the [expletive]? This is nonsense.' The assumption is being in television you have no control. But I felt that if you don't have any control in the theater anymore, you can't be worse off in TV and film, where at least they pay you."

In 1985 he moved to Hollywood, an unknown with an Irish accent. Though he landed a few guest spots on series such as "Remington Steele" and "Moonlighting," fate decreed that he finally win his big break on Broadway, a leading role in the wartime drama "Breaking the Code."

That experience alone taught Meaney not to bother mapping a career. "I don't think it's possible to make career choices," he says. "As soon as you decide on something, something else happens."

But he didn't give up on Hollywood. In 1989 he got the part on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and since then has worked steadily in film, mostly in small-budget, offbeat productions. Which suits him fine. "I like to keep it mixed up," he says. "As an actor you can go from one to the other. You can find good characters in a big commercial project. . . . When you get a certain name, to a certain level, you think -- do you just go with the money gigs all the time, or do you go with the more interesting work? I've always kind of just followed my nose."

It's hard to argue with that sort of logic, and Meaney has the agreeable manner of a person you don't much want to argue with: He's working. He's happy. He takes the opportunities as they come, and lately they've come often.

The only thing that's missing, Meaney acknowledges, is a personal life. His 12-year marriage to Bairbre Dowling broke up in 1994. They have a daughter whom Meaney sees when he's not on location -- which is rarely these days.

Other than that, for the moment Colm Meaney is happy doing what he loves best. "One of the teachers at the Abbey said to me, `You don't go into this profession to be a star. Be a working actor.' As long as I'm working, doing what I want to do, I have options. I have choices. But -- " He pauses. Then changes his mind: no buts. "I'm working, you know?"