All film-making is artifice, and Parker\u2019s Dublin was a heightened version. But his intuition was to populate it with real kids from real bands. One of them was Glen Hansard<\/a>, who had arrived via an accidental audition with no particular interest in acting. Perfect. Parker never had to tell him to stop acting.<\/p>\n Whether the film\u2019s success did most of its cast members any good in the long run is debatable. Some ended up in a live tribute act to the movie. Others drifted. The Commitmentettes, interestingly, went on to more solid entertainment careers. But Hansard, at 20, was the one who saw the whole thing as a distraction and kept his eyes firmly fixed on the prize: a major label contract; a hit album; the world at his feet. It was the dream of a thousand Irish acts swimming hopefully in the slipstream of U2<\/a>.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t happen. Island Records signed his band The Frames and then dropped them, while their Limerick label-mates The Cranberries went and conquered America. In 1992, that was the definition of failure. <\/p>\n We should be grateful to Island, because what happened then was more interesting than some moderately successful international career. A different sort of Irish music scene \u2013 lo-fi, pub-based, rooted in the traditions of busking and the session \u2013 sprang up in the space left behind by the majors as they tired of trying to find the next U2 and went looking for the next Nirvana or Oasis instead. It is not an accident that The Frames made their first post-Island record with financial backing from Whelan\u2019s, the Wexford Street venue at the heart of the Dublin scene Hansard did more than anyone to birth. The music was warmer and more home-made than the stuff the majors were chasing, and it belonged in an Irish tradition of Americana-infused personal songwriting. <\/p>\n There is something odd, though, about a musician who never wanted to be an actor but who ends up being defined not just by his songs, but by his appearance in two films in which he essentially played himself. John Carney\u2019s Dublin in Once is a rather different place from Alan Parker\u2019s one 16 years previously. The city had changed, although Carney\u2019s boho urban landscape was as much of an aesthetic choice as Parker\u2019s gritty one. But the fixed point in both was the same: Glen Hansard, still the busker, still not acting. His relationship with costar Mark\u00e9ta Irglov\u00e1 also mirrored real life: despite an 18-year age gap, their relationship became romantic for two years, and they would continue to collaborate musically until this year.<\/p>\n He was an organiser as well as a performer, a man who could marshal disparate individuals into something coherent, and who would make things happen where others couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t, which is why he ended up conducting proceedings at Shane MacGowan\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n Unlike MacGowan, or Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor, or Dolores O\u2019Riordan, Hansard\u2019s was not a death foreshadowed, nor a life visibly damaged by trauma and the things people reach for to manage it. He was 56 and, by every account, in the middle of a good life.<\/p>\n In the years between The Commitments and Once, Ireland developed a self-image as a place where an international star could walk down the street unbothered, where nobody was too impressed by anybody and where the most complimentary adjective was \u201csound\u201d. It was partly true and partly a flattering fiction, but the ideal it described was real enough. In the days before selfies and virality it had a kind of authenticity that is harder to come by now, when everyone is a curator of their own feed.<\/p>\n Hansard embodied that ideal more completely than anyone. In one of the most perceptive tributes paid after his death, Bono, who has spent a lifetime code-switching between multiple versions of himself, testified that his friend had no mask at all. \u201cTo be utterly yourself by being more interested in others \u2013 a clue for any of us trying out different personas,\u201d wrote Bono. \u201cHe really was who you thought he was.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a well-worn line in politics about sincerity being the one thing that, once you can fake it, you\u2019ve got made. But nobody thinks Hansard was faking his social activism, and particularly his long-standing concerns about the plight of the homeless. The Christmas busk that raised money for the Simon Community really did begin on the street and stay there in spirit, and the Apollo House protest sprang from real outrage at homelessness spiralling.<\/p>\n It can be a hard thing to be a public figure in Ireland without the financial cushion of international success, as Hansard pointed out with disarming candour to Nadine O\u2019Regan in this newspaper earlier this year. For all the acclaim and affection, the money was never simply there to be had. This country, like others, has become a colder house for the mid-level artist. The evisceration of the recorded music business has hollowed out the potential for the sort of unglamorous, locally scaled career that Hansard represented.<\/p>\n![\"Glen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/WE24QWME6VAI5CJQORGQWAZBNA.jpg\")
Glen Hansard at the annual Christmas Eve busk for the Dublin Simon Community, outside the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill\/The Irish Times<\/p>\n