The Star Trek universe is filled with mythic figures — bold leaders, brave warriors, exotic aliens, mighty villains — which is why Colm Meaney always stood out. For more than ten years, through two Star Trek series, he portrayed Chief Miles Edward O’Brien as an honourable bloke.
Meaney will forgive the Star Trek reference. He may have made more than 50 films and featured in numerous plays, but even he would have to admit that O’Brien remains the role he’s best known for. And to the legion of Star Trek fans he’s still fondly remembered for bringing a sense of humour and a reality check to a television franchise prone to lofty idealism.
Star Trek is over now, taking with it the careers of many of its long-serving actors, but Meaney isn’t one of them. Throughout the heady years of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine he lived a parallel life as a hard-working film actor. The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van: Meaney was an essential ingredient in Roddy Doyle’s exuberant Barrytown trilogy. And those who saw him in the Hollywood blockbuster Con Air won’t forget his cocky DEA Agent Duncan Malloy, a man so irritating that you cheered when John Cusack trashed his car.
“I really do have two careers,” Meaney admits. “The TV career that is Star Trek, and the film career that is mostly independent films. A lot of people whom I worked with in films aren’t even aware that I did Star Trek.”
You can see why indie directors like him. With his pugnacious jaw and twinkling eyes, the 53-year-old actor exudes strength and amiability, while his soothing Irish burr inspires an instant sympathy.He may not be the leading-man type, but he has the charm of one.
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Now he’s about to put that charm to good use in his first return to the London stage since starring in Juno and the Paycock at the Donmar in 1999. This time he takes on A Moon for the Misbegotten, starring alongside Kevin Spacey and Eve Best in Eugene O’Neill’s 1943 drama.
Meaney plays the garrulous Phil Hogan, a poor tenant farmer in 1920s rural Connecticut struggling to make a living while conniving to secure a better life for his daughter. And again, Meaney is the down-to-earth antidote, this time to Spacey’s flowery Jim Tyrone, a drink-sodden actor and Hogan’s landlord.
A Moon for the Misbegotten is scheduled for eight shows a week at the Old Vic until Christmas, a long run that initially made Meaney uneasy about taking on the role. He divides his life between Los Angeles and Majorca, and with an 18-month-old daughter at home, family commitments are pressing. But he couldn’t resist such a juicy opportunity. “This is such a great part and such great writing in a great play that you would be a fool not to want to do this at any time in your career,” he says.
Meaney first realised he wanted to be an actor in Dublin, where he was born and raised. He trained at the Abbey Theatre before ending up in New York in the early 1980s; by 1987 he had moved to Los Angeles, where Star Trek brought him to international attention. As a member of an elite science-fiction fraternity, Meaney experienced first-hand the obsessive enthusiasm of fans, but he never felt threatened by them.
“There was a period at the height of Deep Space Nine when anywhere you went people always wanted to say hello,” he says. “But unlike Captain Kirk [aka William Shatner] I never found Star Trek fans to be that demented. I found a huge spectrum of fans, everybody from the meter maid to professors of philosophy, would want to talk to me about it, yet they were generally well behaved.”
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A Moon for the Misbegotten is not his first O’Neill — he did A Long Day’s Journey into Night in California in the late 1980s — but the part of Phil Hogan is one that could have been written for him. “I see Hogan as a noble character disguised by many layers. He’s a very devious man who sets things up in complex ways to achieve his desired effect. But it’s very clear to me that he loves his daughter very much and wants her to be happy.
“When I reread the play, I was absolutely blown away by it. I never really appreciated before the raw emotional power of it or the humour. It’s a very funny play, probably O’Neill at his funniest. This isn’t a dark play at all; there is redemption for everybody in a way.”
Working at the Old Vic with Spacey has been an immensely satisfying experience. “The back-up here is fantastic,” Meaney says. “There is a wonderful emphasis on actors. In fact the actors are looked after here in a way that I’ve never seen in the theatre before. And that comes from Kevin; that’s the great value of having an actor as artistic director.
“It’s been a tough road for him but he’s a very determined man and he won’t let that deflect him. The most thankless job in the world is to be the artistic director of a theatre and why he wanted to do it I don’t know, but I’m full of admiration for what Kevin has achieved so far.”
Meaney’s next project will take him back in front of the camera, in what’s billed as the “first bilingual feature film out of Ireland”.
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“Yes, it’s in Irish and English; it’s based on a play called The Kings of the Kilburn High Road. I speak Gaelic and English, although my Irish is not great. We all learnt Gaelic at school, but when you live abroad you don’t get many opportunities to speak it.”
Living abroad may have diminished his Gaelic but it’s also opened Meaney’s eyes to the cultural stereotyping that Irish actors are subjected to in Britain. “I have played a lot of American characters over the years, and I find that America has no problem with foreign actors playing American parts. Look at the film industry — a lot of the biggest stars right now are foreigners and they play Americans.
“In England, however, the stereotyping is much worse. I’ve lived in the US longer than I’ve lived in Ireland, and yet here in England I’m still considered an Irish actor, so go figure. If you have an Irish guy in an English movie, he’s either drunk or a cretin or an IRA man. I’ve played English characters in American films but I don’t think I would ever get to play an English character in an English film.”
A Moon for the Misbegotten is in preview at the Old Vic, SE1 (0870 0606628), from Sept 15 and opens on Sept 26