Martin’s a Bono fide performer

However you look at it, McCann did a good job. He prepared for the role by studying U2’s early material — he was a fan anyway — and talked to people who knew the singer when he was still Paul Hewson, including Ian Flooks, a friend and former U2 agent. Yet McCann was careful to remain an actor and not a mimic.

Killing Bono is based on a true story about two brothers who attended the same secondary school as U2 and tried to start their own band. The McCormick brothers, played by Robert Sheehan of E4’s Misfits and the Chronicles of Narnia star Ben Barnes, were doomed to strum forever in the shadow of their successful classmates. Neil McCormick, now a music journalist, originally told the story in the book I Was Bono’s Doppelgänger, but it was the U2 singer who came up with the movie title, saying: “I know a few people who would wear that on a T-shirt.”

“Bono has seen it and liked it,” says McCann. “Nick Hamm said he sent me his thanks. I haven’t met Bono in the flesh yet but [the band] liked it. They were happy. I just wanted him to be a young, normal guy. There are a lot of ideas about who or what Bono is. Anyone I’ve spoken to, who knows him directly, says he was just a nice, intelligent young man.

“Because I had to do my homework, I was watching who U2 were, where they came from. They were all together in the same school and they just so happened to start this little band that became the biggest band in the world. I realised for the first time what they had done as a band and how massive they became from such an unlikely background.”

Given he has starred in big-budget international projects and been championed by Oscar-winning directors Steven Spielberg and Richard Attenborough, McCann could also be seen to have “an unlikely background”. The eldest of three, he was raised by his mother in the Divis flats area of Belfast’s Falls Road. He says he was an adventurous, crazy child who stayed out past curfew and was “a bit wild”. While he grew up during the Troubles, he knew how to handle himself and never regarded his neighbourhood as unsafe.

“My history and my past is the Falls Road. Obviously it was working class — there was never a lot of money in the area,” he says. “In fact, there was no money in the area and it was plagued by the Troubles for God knows how many years. I think growth in the place was definitely stifled on all levels: socially, financially. It would have been renowned as a rough area, definitely. Probably one of the roughest in Northern Ireland.

“I’ve done well for my area. I’m aware of it and I’m reminded of it every time I come home because people always talk about it to me. Not that many get a chance to travel the world doing what they want to do, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple of years. But this industry is so overhyped. It’s made out to be bigger and better than it actually is. It’s not that great.

“I really appreciate what I’m doing, but I’m just an actor trying to get the next job. I’ve being acting since I was 11. I may have more money in my account and it’ll enable me to go on holiday or buy a cappuccino when I want, but there’s nothing else different for me.”

McCann started in local musicals such as Oliver! and Bugsy Malone. His big-screen debut came when Attenborough cast him in Closing the Ring, a 2007 film shot in Antrim and co-starring Shirley MacLaine and Mischa Barton. Attenborough subsequently recommended him to Spielberg for a role in The Pacific, a 10-part mini-series. He was cast as RV Burgin, a real-life marine who earned several medals for bravery. As with playing Bono, this required a careful balance.

“RV Burgin was a guy that not only existed but had done a monumental, brave thing when he was a young lad and he carried that with him all his life. He was proud of what he’d done and who he was as a man. You’re this little kid from Belfast who has to fill his shoes, so automatically you feel quite intimidated,” he says. “If the person doesn’t exist or they’re dead, you can make up your own version. But when the person’s alive, you don’t want to copy them because you’re not a mimic, you’re an actor.”

McCann starring in Killing Bono (front)

McCann has also starred in Clash of the Titans and Swansong — Story of Occi Byrne, for which he won the best actor gong at this year’s Ifta (Irish Film and Television Academy) awards. He credits a lot of his achievements to YouthAction — Northern Ireland, an acting group for Catholic and Protestant youngsters of which he is now a patron. The initiative gave him his first taste of acting and helped him avoid the prejudices that still bedevil some pockets of the north.

“With many people, there was an in-built prejudice growing up. You see it as a young child and you do what you see. That doesn’t make people bad,” McCann says.

“I did not grow up with a prejudice because I had the good fortune to do drama from a young age, with Protestants and Catholics. As part of the children’s exchange programme, I went to South Carolina and met a wonderful family who I love dearly. [The programme] brought Protestant and Catholic children over and housed them together with a quite well-off American family, so you were brought out of your social deprivation and segregation and brought together.”

McCann now lives in London but is back in Belfast for two months of filming. First up is Jump, a dark comedy about a man who meets a woman just as she is about to throw herself off the Foyle Bridge in Derry. The second is the latest offering from Terry George, the director of Hotel Rwanda. Whole Lotta Sole will co-star Brendan Fraser as McCann’s long-lost father.

McCann is living in a Belfast hotel but regular trips to his childhood home should keep him grounded. He says acting is an important part of his life yet does not define him — his family do that. If he starts to forget where he’s from, they will remind him.

This was the case after he appeared on the Today show to promote The Pacific. The actor meant to say he had flown in from Dublin, but ended up saying he was from Dublin. “When I got back home everybody was like, ‘Oh, you’re from Dublin, is that it?’ I was on a Northern Irish television show the same week and made it clear I was from Belfast,” he laughs.

His career is progressing steadily but he is rarely recognised on the street. As he puts it, it’s more, “Do I know you from somewhere?” than “Oh my God, it’s that Colin Farrell”. Such is the transformation for his latest role he will most likely continue to pass unnoticed. Although someone might just tell Bono that he looks a little like that Martin McCann.

Killing Bono is released on April 1