On screen, stage and in person, Peter McDonald is a master of understatement. When he is acting this skill can make for some powerful performances.
He has played roles in serious, poignant dramas -- Felicia's Journey, Nora and Neil Jordan's White Horses, one of the Three Plays which opened at the Gate last week -- and clever, genre-bending comedies -- When Brendan Met Trudy, I Went Down.
In person, however, his diffident manner poses a problem. Although clearly amiable, McDonald, 29, is extremely guarded about what he feels and thinks. He will clear his throat, ask for the question to be further defined, then approach it as tentatively as if it were a loaded gun pointed right at him. Critics have described him as being "just as foxy as Ewan MacGregor". When the subject of his good looks arises, however, a faint flush comes to his cheeks. Suddenly, all the carefully thought-out phrases melt away. The Dublin-born actor inhales once, then cuts loose in protest.
"I've played a lot of roles that made me look really ugly," he says. "I did Paths To Freedom last year and I played Tommo the rocker and I just look a bleedin' state in it.
"And I'm just about to shoot a series called Fergus's Wedding and I'm going to look awful in that as well. And I did a cameo for Paddy Breathnach in a film called Blowdry and I just look awful in that!"
He breathes out. "The actor's job is to approach a character emotionally and intellectually. I don't think about what the character looks like, outside of the things that are specific to what the character is meant to be."
McDonald's true gift as an actor may well lie in these almost chameleon-like transformations. He can appear pale, repressed and uptight (Nora); funny, cute and thoughtful (I Went Down); or good-looking, introverted and slightly bland (When Brendan Met Trudy).
For his current role in Neil Jordan's short play White Horses, he must communicate the inner turmoil of a man whose girlfriend (played by Catherine McCormack) has just left him. As he describes the character, his passion for the role and the degree of seriousness with which he plies his craft are strongly evident.
McDonald first began acting in UCD. The band in which he played guitar had broken up and he was looking for another artistic outlet. He joined the Drama Society and soon found that his "talents, such as they were, lay in that area". By the age of 21, he knew what he wanted to do with his life.
He met acclaimed playwright Conor McPherson -- whose new production Come on Over is the second of the Three Plays -- after college, when the two were members of the Fly By Night theatre company. Their stars rose together.
McPherson cast McDonald in several of his plays -- Inventing Fortune's Wheel, The Stars Lose Their Glory and the radio play of This Lime Tree Bower. When McPherson wrote his first screenplay, I Went Down, McDonald shared the joint lead in the film with Brendan Gleeson.
Having enjoyed a working relationship for ten years, McDonald and McPherson are now close friends. The actor is quick to reject any hint of criticism of the writer.
Most recently, McDonald featured in Saltwater, McPherson's film adaptation of This Lime Tree Bower and the writer's directorial debut. While the play had been justly acclaimed for its funny, emotive and well-observed script, the film garnered mixed reviews. Some were scathingly derisive.
One Sunday Times critic noted that "a strong anti-intellectual streak runs through Saltwater". He also commented that McPherson (who has a degree in philosophy) "strains too hard to say that proletarian pleasures are more real than cerebral entertainments".
"I think a lot is misinterpreted," McDonald says in response. "In Saltwater, there's a character who is a philosophy lecturer. Conor wasn't attacking philosophy at all. He was attacking his vanity, his perceived opinion of what philosophy gave him as a human being.
"That character doesn't have much respect for women and it's like saying that Conor is a misogynist because his character's like that. If anything, Conor asks about what people are going through and why they are making decisions, which I think is the basis for philosophy."
McDonald is proud of the fact that the Irish films in which he has featured have been box-office successes in Ireland.
"They're small budget films," he says. "We put them out here and, basically, go up against the American films which have much more muscle behind them and bigger stars. People don't go to films just because they're set in Ireland. It's fulfilling to think that it can reach that kind of market."
Has he any plans to go to Hollywood?
"I'd like to make films over there, yeah," he says. He pauses. "I think the film business has changed a lot -- even since I got into it six or seven years ago. There are so many magazine publications and so much exposure, as the Americans call it. I think you really have to go and play that game.
"I don't think they really see you as having been on the map unless you've been on the front of those magazines.
"You see all these guys coming up whose films you haven't seen. And they could be on the front of the magazine smiling out. Either they're smiling, thinking, 'I've done some really good films', or else they're going [grins through gritted teeth], 'this could all be over in a year', you know?"
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