Kerry Condon: ‘I did like being violent. That was really relaxing for me, bizarrely. There was something about a character who didn't give a f**k that was really freeing'
Condon has, for years, found herself on every type of TV and movie set going, from the Marvel Cinematic Universe epic through to the handcrafted Irish indie film. But being nominated for a heap of major awards in 2023 (including a Best Supporting Actress Oscar) for her role as Siobhán in The Banshees of Inisherin seems to have unlocked another level professionally.
'Two days after the Oscars, Joseph (Kosinski, F1's director, who also directed Tron: Legacy and Top Gun: Maverick) called and said, 'Hey, I'd really like you to be Kate.' I was kind of waiting to hear if I'd gotten it, so that seemed to me that things had changed,' Condon says. 'I mean, I might have gotten it before [the Oscar nomination] but I don't know. I do feel like it was a major bunch of flowers I got two days afterwards.'
Condon has always had a knack for picking nuanced and substantial characters — Banshees' Siobhán being a case in point — and in F1, her character is no love-interest shrinking violet.
F1 sees her star opposite Pitt, Javier Bardem and Damson Idris as Kate McKenna, the race director of the fictional APXGP team, and the first female technical director in Formula One. The character is heavily influenced by Condon's research work with the Irish strategy engineer Bernie Collins. The film is also produced by Hollywood giant Jerry Bruckheimer, who knows a thing or two about a megabucks project.
'I've always wanted to do a blockbuster movie, and obviously this is the female lead in a massive blockbuster movie,' Condon says, on a Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. 'And then they wanted me to be Irish. I thought, 'Jeez, I don't think I've seen that before, the Irish accent in a female lead, in a big massive movie.' I wanted to wear my Claddagh ring in the movie too, one that my mother got me and I wear all the time, so my character got to wear that.'
The filming of F1 happened over two years, and took Condon and the cast all over the world to film at various Formula 1 tracks and real race events. Somehow, Condon shot substantial roles in two other feature films amid it all: Pressure, opposite Andrew Scott, and Train Dreams, alongside Joel Edgerton.
'I just knew we were going to have crazy fun on the movie,' she reflects of the F1 experience. 'Saying goodbye at the end was very emotional. I really didn't want it to end. I could have done it for years more.'
As the F1 cast and crew made their way around the world, Pitt, in particular, was photographed regularly by paparazzi as he appeared at various F1 Grand Prix events. Fame and celebrity are part of a world that Condon wants nothing to do with. Condon has long been intensely private about her off-camera life in favour of keeping the focus on the work, and F1's American publicist politely reminds me to keep my interview questions movie-related.
Condon is careful not to reveal any details of her personal relationships, although did tell the RTÉ Guide in 2018, 'I don't really care if I never get married. I don't really care if I never have kids. There's loads of things I've planned for my life. So I've gone on and made plans for my life regardless of those things happening to me.'
Now, she explains, 'My family are very private. Without me being an actress, we just always kind of were and are like that. So it seems a bit odd for me to be ramming my achievements down people's throats. It's just not my style. And particularly in Ireland, all my friends there have normal jobs, and I like getting the train and going on the bus with my friends to restaurants and things like that.
'I was aware that if I let that go, I would never get it back, and I didn't want to make everyone else's lives around me harder,' she adds. 'I wasn't crazy about the idea of chasing something like that. There's a real joy in being able to walk down Grafton Street and go and do fun things with my friends, where we're all just like it used to be years ago. It just doesn't come naturally to me to be posting private things [online] or be talking about private things.'
And yet, Condon was in her element on the Oscar campaign circuit during 2023's award season, often in a Thurles accent that hasn't been blunted one bit by living elsewhere. Pressing the flesh, appearing on huge chat shows and getting into the public's eyeline is very much part and parcel of the nominee playbook, and Condon was memorably charming as she did it.
'To be honest, it was crazy,' she says of the hectic period. At the time, she was also filming Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. 'I didn't realise how much of a big deal it all was until I came home and my mother showed me all the newspaper cuttings. I wasn't sitting back observing this — it's very different when you're in it. I was miles from home too. I was here in LA on my own and all my family were in Ireland. So I would get texts where my mum would say, 'Oh, there's this thing and that thing' [in the media], and I would be like, 'Oh, that's nice.' And then I'd have to go to work.'
Even now, Condon gets a bit emotional about the run-up to the Oscars in 2023. Famously, she watched the telecast of the nominations in her co-star Colin Farrell's house as he too got the Oscars nod. One memory from that time in particular sticks out, and it's largely down to the people of her hometown of Thurles.
'Loads of people in my hometown sent my mum cards to give me; it actually kind of made me cry,' she says. 'Everyone was so happy for me, and that was lovely. That was more moving to me. All these sweet families for no reason buying a 'well done' card. I just saw a lot of goodwill there. People were very generous and proud and that made me feel amazing.'
She watched the Oscar ceremony at home earlier this year. 'My first thought was, 'My God, that was me.' It's very hard to explain.'
It wasn't Condon's first Oscars rodeo — she attended in 2012 for her part in the short film Shore, which won the Live Action Short Film Category. She attended the 2023 ceremony with her younger brother, whom she described as her 'little lucky charm'.
'I was so nervous,' she admits. 'I said it to Saoirse [Ronan] when I saw her, 'Were you that nervous?' Like, you know it's coming. They say 'Supporting Actress' and your heart starts pounding. There's a camera in your face that you're really aware of, and then Brendan [Gleeson] and Colin [Farrell] want you to win, and ay-ay-ay… there's a million things on your mind.
'I remember at the Golden Globes, which was the first [major awards ceremony of the season], and when they said Angela Bassett, I was like, 'Thank God.' I just wasn't ready. I just wasn't ready to go up on the stage. I was just really cool with being nominated. There was no sense of entitlement — I've always wanted [just to be nominated]. But the fact it was a major career moment wasn't lost on me, you know.'
Growing up in Thurles as the third of four children, Condon came from an unstarry family with few links to showbusiness. Still, the youngster showed an interest in acting from a very young age. She spent so much time talking about her escape from her hometown that, according to one report in the Los Angeles Times, her father gave her the nickname 'Fledgy-poo'. At the age of 10, she reviewed The Lion King for a local radio station.
At 16, she wrote to Alan Parker, director of The Commitments, telling him about her dream of becoming an actor. It would turn out to be a fortuitous letter. At 16, and after she went for the audition entirely off her own back, Parker gave Condon her first on-screen role in Angela's Ashes. She played Theresa, the first love of the teenage Frank McCourt (when Condon won her Bafta in 2023 for The Banshees of Inisherin, she gave Parker a shout-out).
A small role in Ballykissangel also materialised, and two years later, she starred in How Harry Became A Tree opposite Cillian Murphy. Not long after that, she was getting head-butted by Colin Farrell's character in an iconic scene for the movie Intermission.
Though she had attended courses at the Dublin Theatre Arts School as a teenager, Condon was already working regularly and steadily by the time the idea of formal training at drama school came up. She reportedly enrolled in the now-defunct acting degree course at the Samuel Beckett Centre in Trinity College, but only went for one day as she got a call offering her a role in the film Rat on that very first day.
She then moved to London for work at the age of 19, and was offered the role of Mairead in the premiere production of Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore at the RSC. Not long after, she was cast in the same company as Ophelia in Hamlet. She was the youngest actor to appear in the role for the company and, at the time, she was the only person in the cast not to have attended drama school.
Speaking of education, Condon is keenly aware that it's Leaving Cert season back at home.
'I look back and think, 'Why was so much pressure put on us at the Leaving Cert?' I remember how stressed I was doing it,' she says. 'It's only when you go to other countries that you do realise how amazing our education system is. We are so lucky to have such an incredible education. This character [Kate] is so smart and I was so proud that I had the education where I was able to go, 'Yeah, I can see an Irish girl doing this.''
There has never been a shortage of prestigious gigs for Condon down the years, but it hasn't always been smooth sailing. She has missed out on the odd role (including, according to some reports, the lead in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. That eventually went to Rooney Mara).
'Oh my god, I boycott the movie,' she says of the roles she doesn't get, laughing. 'I'm like, 'Go off, fine, that's your choice.' You have to think you're good or you're not going to get anywhere, but if I'm not even considered for it and someone else gets it and I would have liked it… ah, there are times when it goes to the right person for the right reasons, and I would like to think that I can give credit where it's due. There are great actresses and sometimes they just suit that role at the time more than I would have, and that's OK.
'I mean, not to be doomsday, but we're all going to die. I mean, that's the great equaliser, so it's not the be all and end all. But if I'm down to the last two and I don't get it… yeah, I don't even want to hear about [the film].'
Around the time Condon was in the RSC as a teenager, she met Martin McDonagh and the actor David Wilmot, who became two of her closest friends. Her collaborations with McDonagh have been especially fruitful, and he is said to have written the role of Siobhán in The Banshees of Inisherin with Condon in mind.
Condon notes that Wilmot, who has appeared in The Guard, Intermission and Calvary, made her 'a better actress'.
'That's not even just being nice to David, that's the truth,' she says. 'David gave me so many tips to this day that I still call him up for advice on certain things that I'm having trouble navigating.'
What's the best advice anyone has ever given her?
'I don't know if it's acting advice, but I was told, as a woman, to always have your own money,' she says. 'I do think that was really good advice, because you can be really independent when you have your own money. You can get out of any situation. If you have your own money, you can get a cab and get the hell out of there. I hate to give money that power, but I do think, as a woman, it's very important. To this day, I'm very adamant that I have my own money.'
Is there a type of different acting role she might like to take up in the future?
'I don't know, but I did like being violent,' she says, referring to her role in In the Land of Saints and Sinners, which she filmed in Donegal and starred opposite Liam Neeson.
'That was really relaxing for me, bizarrely,' she says. 'I did go, 'Huh, that's interesting.' There was something about a character who didn't give a f**k that was really freeing. It made you kind of go, 'Jeez, why do I analyse everything in my life?' Like playing someone who doesn't care what anyone thinks of them, it was very empowering and fun. You'd think it would make you angry, but it was the opposite. I was sitting in Donegal, looking out at the baby lambs, thinking life was great.'
After one of the most gratifying streaks in her professional life, a long overdue break is still very much on the cards this year.
'I've always wanted to be an actress my whole life and I still have that, I just love it, but there are other things in life,' Condon reflects. 'There's my horses — I want to be a better rider, and I want to learn so much about the ocean. I have my horses, and think that when my horses are older and they're gone, what other thing would I like to explore?
'Scuba diving and marine life and freediving, all that ocean stuff really appeals to me. And I think that might be the next phase of my life. Horses are such a commitment, and such a lifestyle, so when that's wrapped up for me, I think I'll have to pivot to some other kind of all-consuming thing. It seems like a big second, hard mountain to climb, but that I could do something good in that way.
'I love taking care of things, I love being a mammy,' she adds. 'I love minding animals and making them feel good. I love knowing that my money is being used for something greater than me.'
Condon describes her farm, just outside Seattle and home to her horses, dogs and cat, with huge affection. Her father bred horses when she was growing up in Tipperary, and her cousin, Richard, is a jockey.
'I mean, I basically bought my horses a house,' she says. 'That brings me a lot of joy, because sometimes I do feel that I don't understand my drive as an actor. I don't know where it came from. I don't know why I have this obsession. So it eases me a little to know, 'Well, I'm going to do this on the farm with the money I make from this movie,' as opposed to, 'Me, me, me, I'm going to buy a Prada handbag and I'm going to be famous.' That does nothing for me.'
'F1 'will show in Irish cinemas from Friday, June 27
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