A lot of life has happened in the decade and a bit between those two Everyman bookends. Hardwicke studied at the The Lir Academy in Trinity College Dublin. He made his senior film debut in the unsettling Irish horror flick Vivarium. He was among the many actors \u2013 they count as a generation to themselves \u2013 who profited from an appearance in the pandemic sensation that was Normal People. A Bafta nomination came his way for the unsettling 2023 BBC series The Sixth Commandment. He appeared opposite Nina Hoss in a hugely acclaimed production of Chekhov\u2019s The Cherry Orchard in the West End of London.<\/p>\n
He has not, however, yet had an annus so mirabilis as the one he is currently enjoying. Saipan lands in cinemas in early January. He is currently playing Christy Mahon, one of the great Irish roles, in Caitr\u00edona McLaughlin\u2019s production of John Millington Synge\u2019s The Playboy of the Western World for the Royal National Theatre on London\u2019s South Bank.<\/p>\n
The very notion of entering that famous hulk by Waterloo Station sounds intimidating. The National was launched by Laurence Oliver at the Old Vic in 1963 and moved to its present looming dominant spot in 1976.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it\u2019s not intimidating at all,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause the building is so brilliantly brutalist. I love it. Were it to have more grandeur it might feel a bit imperial. But because it\u2019s this act of socialist Britain \u2013 building a national theatre \u2013 when I am walking into the building it feels like both a theatre and an office.\u201d<\/p>\n
I imagine rehearsing a production of that size and significance hangs over your whole life. You have to stay in shape. You can\u2019t go on the tear. You have to keep your voice intact.<\/p>\n
![\"Nicola](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/DN63RXXRMRED3D3MDINNBFGWLQ.jpg\")
Nicola Coughlan (left), \u00c9anna Hardwicke and Siobh\u00e1n McSweeney appearing in Caitr\u00edona McLaughlin\u2019s production of The Playboy of the Western World at London\u2019s Royal National Theatre. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo, actually, rehearsals are kind of anti-stress, because you do all of that between 10 and six,\u201d he says airily. \u201cYou go in in the morning and you have this whole room that\u2019s dedicated to all of your mad ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n
An interesting argument. Some actors do find theatre more stressful than film, but it doesn\u2019t sound as if Hardwicke is one of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn a film set, often it\u2019s all arranged. You need to arrive super-early in the morning and be prepared, under the assumption that you then need to know exactly what you\u2019re doing. Because there\u2019s no time to waste. Whereas rehearsals for theatre is a very cathartic, healthy place to be. Because you get the time to work it all out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hardwicke seems impressively relaxed about where he finds himself. A lanky fellow with a lugubrious line in discourse, he gives no impression of being trapped in the headlights. Mind you, he has been at this lark for quite some time. Raised in central Cork and later in Glanmire, to the northeast of the city, he was educated at Ashton School before making his way to the Lir in Dublin. As long ago as 2009, he had a juvenile role opposite Ciar\u00e1n Hinds and Aidan Quinn in Conor McPherson\u2019s spooky film The Eclipse. Was that just a happy accident, or he did he already have ambitions to become an actor?<\/p>\n
![\"Éanna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/QL3MN2XUTNGEJAWSLGXUKZ4URI.jpg\")
\u00c9anna Hardwicke: ‘Speaking Shakespeare can do strange things to you. Working on Chekhov can bring brilliant things. And I sound like a lovey when I talk about it.’ Photograph: Pip <\/p>\n
\u201cA bit of both,\u201d he says. \u201cI had joined a few acting classes, and I loved it. I really felt like it was the thing I wanted \u2013 the way I wanted to spend my weekend. I was probably realising at that point that I wasn\u2019t going to be a footballer anytime soon. Ha ha! It\u2019s that age of 11 or 12 when you come up against the fact that talent is a thing. And I was no athlete. I was no footballer. I just loved the people who were in youth theatre. It\u2019s such a hilarious thing to do \u2013 to go in and make believe for two hours. I had that instinct from age 11 \u2013 and it doesn\u2019t really change.\u201d<\/p>\n
[\u00a0I\u2019ve just seen Saipan, The Movie. Spoiler alert: it doesn\u2019t end wellOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n You could not do better than have an early job with Ciar\u00e1n Hinds: one of the nicest and smartest fellows in the business.<\/p>\n \u201cExactly. A phenomenal actor and a really generous, generous actor to work with. He probably indulged me a lot in my questions as an annoying kid.\u201d<\/p>\n Hardwicke seems like the sort of intelligent fellow who could have done all kinds of things at university. Rather than pretending to be Christy Mahon or Roy Keane he could be \u2013 I\u2019m guessing here \u2013 removing gall bladders or designing suspension bridges. I wonder how relaxed his parents were about him going to drama school instead. Who knew he would score so many good roles so quickly?<\/p>\n \u201cFunny you should ask that, because I had hang-ups about that that my parents didn\u2019t,\u201d he says. \u201cMy mum is a really wonderful guidance counsellor, and she\u2019s always just said: \u2018Whatever ye love doing, go off and do it.\u2019 Which I think is an incredible privilege. If you\u2019re told that from a young age, you actually start to believe it. And I felt incredibly lucky, because people don\u2019t always say: \u2018Just go for it with both hands.\u2019 And she did. I went to the Lir and I found everything I wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n That drama school has become a powerful force in launching the current generation of young Irish actors. Paul Mescal, Alison Oliver, Alex Murphy and Agnes Casey are just a few near-contemporaries who landed successfully after graduation.<\/p>\n \u201cI think, at 18, it was the first time I had that feeling: this acting is a deep thing,\u201d he says. \u201cSpeaking Shakespeare can do strange things to you. Working on Chekhov can bring brilliant things. And I sound like a lovey when I talk about it. Ha ha! But, yeah, I completely drank \u2013 and drink \u2013 the Kool Aid.\u201d<\/p>\n I had first heard of Hardwicke when, in early 2020, I featured him in this newspaper among \u201cfive to watch\u201d in film and TV for the coming year<\/a>. His role in Lorcan Finnegan\u2019s Vivarium was distinctly, uniquely unsettling. By the time the film premiered at Cannes he was already signed up for a much-anticipated TV adaptation of Sally Rooney\u2019s second novel. In Normal People, he played Rob, one of the school\u2019s jokers, who ended up taking his own life. Speaking to me in 2023, Hardwicke acknowledged he had met people who identified with the character\u2019s troubling journey. <\/p>\n \u2018You always think, as a general rule, anything that feels like a challenge \u2013 anything that feels like it requires something you haven\u2019t done before \u2013 has to be a good thing\u2019<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0\u00c9anna Hardwicke on his acting projects<\/p>\n Lenny Abrahamson, the Oscar-nominated director of Normal People, remembers the impact Hardwicke had over the strange locked-in summer of 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved working with him on Normal People,\u201d he tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s the sign of a great actor that you can look at them in a supporting role and think: I\u2019d watch a film centred on that character.\u201d<\/p>\n Abrahamson acknowledges the contrasting energies Hardwicke has at his disposal. He conveyed concealed sadness as Rob. He was deeply sinister as a devious murderer in The Sixth Commandment.<\/p>\n \u201c\u00c9anna is a brilliant talent,\u201d the director continues. \u201cHe is versatile, skilful, intelligent and deeply committed to his work. He is capable of astonishing vulnerability as well as menace and, always, underneath, there\u2019s that intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n Was Hardwicke surprised at the success of Normal People?<\/p>\n \u201cIn one way, it wasn\u2019t a surprise, because the material was there,\u201d he says. \u201cI think, also, there never really had been anything like it in our TV landscape. There had never been anything like that with money, with a budget behind it \u2013 something telling a character-driven story that, on paper, is a hard sell. It\u2019s not about a war. It\u2019s not about gangland crime. It\u2019s not about sci-fi.\u201d<\/p>\n Like so many of his contemporaries in the business, Hardwicke eventually hopped on a plane to London. That is currently his base, but we are no longer in the era where \u2013 as it was in the 1980s or 1990s \u2013 that move feels like a life-changing operation. Communication with home is so easy. Travel is cheap. <\/p>\n \u201cWe probably have this conversation every six weeks, eight weeks, where we talk about the feeling of being in a brilliant city and really enjoying it, but also about the inevitability of when you\u2019ll move home. I feel that there is an inevitability that I will.\u201d<\/p>\n At any rate, he makes sure to get home for interesting domestic projects. He spent a fair bit of last autumn in windier parts of north Co Dublin shooting the intriguing Ancestors with no less a star than Christina Hendricks. David Turpin\u2019s film follows a troubled young man adrift in London during the Aids years. Hendricks, late of Mad Men, looks to be playing a fantasy figure conjured from the mists of Hollywood\u2019s golden age. An exciting prospect.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I read David\u2019s script and then met him, I was lost for words about what I felt he was doing on the page and how he spoke about the story,\u201d Hardwicke says. \u201cAnd the other side of that coin is, you always think, as a general rule, anything that feels like a challenge \u2013 anything that feels like it requires something you haven\u2019t done before \u2013 has to be a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n [\u00a0Cork actor \u00c9anna Hardwicke: \u2018There is a shift. Young men are more open\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Well, he hasn\u2019t played an iconic footballer or the trigger for an early 20th century art riot before. Let\u2019s ponder the meaning of Playboy of the Western World for a spell. First performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1907, Synge\u2019s subversive comedy follows an archetypal rogue who gains fatal glamour by claiming \u2013 erroneously, as it transpires \u2013 that he has murdered his own father. Digging through the Abbey files, Hardwicke discovered Playboy is one of the two most-performed plays in the theatre\u2019s history \u2013 Sean O\u2019Casey\u2019s The Plough and the Stars is the other \u2013 but its first outing gave few pointers to that longevity. The resulting riots apparently spread beyond the auditorium and into wider Dublin. Objections to patricide? To the coarseness of the language?<\/p>\n \u2018I enjoy the feeling of each job being the one and only. You might never do another one again\u2019<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0\u00c9anna Hardwicke on his acting career<\/p>\n \u201cInterestingly, the riots apparently started on opening night, when the word \u2018shift\u2019 was mentioned,\u201d Hardwicke says with a shake of the head. \u201cThere\u2019s a mention of Christy saying \u2013 I\u2019m paraphrasing now \u2013 \u2018But what would I care if there was 1,000 women all in their shifts, lined up and walking towards me?\u2019 There had been some stirrings up to that point. But that was the moment where people rose up. The idea was of being exposed. What they objected to was the presentation of women in rural Ireland as asexual \u2013 as pure maidens with no sexuality.\u201d<\/p>\n The current production at the Royal National Theatre features some distinguished Derry Girls alumni: Nicola Coughlan is Pegeen Mike; Siobh\u00e1n McSweeney is Widow Quin. The legendary Lorcan Cranitch is on board as Michael Flaherty. Caitr\u00edona McLaughlin, current artistic director of the Abbey, looks to have been running a congenial rehearsal room in London.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say Caitr\u00edona is intensely collaborative,\u201d Hardwicke says. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t want to impose anything on the text. She wants everything to be revealed word by word \u2013 moment by moment. I think, for me, that is what great plays allow you to do. You can actually approach them with a beginner\u2019s mind \u2013 as if they\u2019ve never been done before. You realise the play will guide you, rather than any concept being imposed on the play. So, I find that really satisfying.\u201d<\/p>\n What do we make of Synge\u2019s heightened language? Do we see a bit of that in contemporary work from Martin McDonagh?<\/p>\n \u201cI think his language is the language of McDonagh\u2019s plays,\u201d Hardwicke says. \u201cI see a through line. I don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s intentional or not, but I do see it. Synge was a musician. I think he was aware of the music of language. He was aware of creating something other than just reality on stage.\u201d<\/p>\n There are no survivors of the riots at the opening of Playboy of the Western World to post angrily about the current production on social media. Most of the controversies have been tidied away in a century of academic discourse and theatrical reinterpretation. The argy-bargy addressed in Saipan, despite occurring more than two decades ago, is, however, still eerily fresh in a great many angry minds.<\/p>\n You either know the story already or don\u2019t much care. At the training camp on Saipan, Roy Keane, captain of the team, became irritated at a range of perceived inadequacies: poor catering, unsatisfactory travel arrangements, missing equipment. Chatter and debate in print and broadcast media built to a showdown (a story in this newspaper was a particular tipping point), during which Keane launched a legendary tirade against his Yorkshire-born manager. \u201cYou\u2019re a f**king wa**er. I didn\u2019t rate you as a player, I don\u2019t rate you as a manager, and I don\u2019t rate you as a person,\u201d the skipper allegedly bellowed. Keane ultimately ended up leaving the camp. Ireland got as far as the round of 16.<\/p>\n Paul Fraser\u2019s cunning script for the new film keeps a tight focus on the two antagonists. Steve Coogan is phlegmatic as McCarthy. Hardwicke, at least initially, makes Keane a tad less abrasive than he is normally described as. That late rant seems, therefore, all the more shocking.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was clear from the outset we were not doing a documentary or a biopic,\u201d Hardwicke says. \u201cAt the same time, you don\u2019t just take licence. Paul Fraser has rigorously investigated this. The way he talks about it is really interesting. I\u2019ve heard him speak about how you know, when you\u2019re telling true stories, that you have flags in the sand \u2013 things that actually need to happen. You can\u2019t undo them. And you then fill in the emotional gaps.\u201d<\/p>\n I wonder whether he has a stand on the controversy. There is a half-consensus out there that Keane was right to point out perceived inadequacies at the camp, but wrong to abuse McCarthy as he eventually did.<\/p>\n![\"Éanna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/JIS3WNAMGNAXDF3M2565DNJIBU.jpg\")
\u00c9anna Hardwicke is playing Christy Mahon, one of the great Irish roles, in Caitr\u00edona McLaughlin\u2019s production of John Millington Synge\u2019s The Playboy of the Western World <\/p>\n![\"Steve](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/YI7SBPCS7BA7JEB7CFYV5WPNKA.jpg\")
Steve Coogan (left) and \u00c9anna Hardwicke in Saipan. Photograph: Aidan Monaghan <\/p>\n