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ROBERT SHEEHAN DIDN’T go to LA to escape Darren from Love/Hate, but with his latest role the Portlaoise actor is proving he’s more than just a one-gang wonder (or make that two-gang, considering his role in Misfits).
For his new flick The Road Within, the 27-year-old got to play a young guy who’s radically different from the ill-fated blue-hoody-wearing Dubliner.
Life with Tourette’s
The character, Vincent, is a man with Tourette’s Syndrome, who is sent to a therapeutic centre to help him deal with his condition.
At the centre, he bonds with characters played by Zoe Kravitz and Dev Patel, and the trio end up going on an unsanctioned road trip.
Sheehan is perhaps best known for his roles of Nathan in the Misfits and Darren in Love/Hate, but he has appeared on stage and screen since the late 2000s. The youngest of three, he was encouraged to act by his mother, who took him to his first audition at the age of 14.
With his striking looks and youthful demeanour, it’s no surprise that he’s had no problems picking up roles in the US in recent years.
In The Road Within, Vincent’s physical tics and offensive language are at first shocking, but Sheehan shows the person behind the syndrome.
For Sheehan – who was in Dublin today to promote the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival – it was a role that he relished.
One thing he wanted to ensure was that his portrayal of Tourette’s wasn’t done badly.
A friend of the film’s director, Jaxon Kramer, spent time with Sheehan to show him what life is like with the syndrome.
“He was sort of an open book,” said Sheehan, whose most recent films include The Mortal Instruments.
His objective in the whole thing was not to have Tourette’s expressed in a dishonest way.
“He’s very involved with the Tourette’s Society of America and very aware of the fact that this ailment has been expressed dishonestly quite a few times in film, through no fault of people,” said Sheehan.
The pair spent months working together, but it took a while before Sheehan got things right. He recalls “a couple of months of getting it desperately wrong, and being over-zealous, jumping into the Tourette’s and the physical expression of the whole thing”.
It took me jumping in and being way over the top and then scaling the whole thing back, to a point where then we could start the exploration of the character. Where the tics I’d come up with were very natural for my body.
The tics are “completely out of your control”, said Sheehan.
“It’s hard to take control of something that you ultimately don’t want to be in control of.” He had to learn to “try to manifest it in my own body”.
For about six or seven weeks, he lived with the tics. Did this help him gain an understanding of what life is like for people with Tourette’s?
I wanted to encourage it and make it feel as natural as possible in me. But by no means did I gain a true, real understanding of what it is to live with something like this for years.
The only real understanding he got was from talking to Jaxon and his family and friends, and watching videos of him as an adolescent.
“I could never really know what it was truly like to grow up like that. But I got a slice of it.”
Greetings from LA
Sheehan recently moved to LA from London. Was going to the City of Angels a way of enabling him to escape his best-known characters like Nathan and Darren?
“The task of an actor is always to, in my opinion, break new ground and go for different stuff,” is his answer.
The drive to decamp to LA was inspired by the prospect of a “cold and hard winter in London” and a film role in Louisiana. He took the opportunity, and jumped.
“Frankly I was… I’m a bit restless by my nature so I was ready to live somewhere else,” he said. “Even though I have people I deeply love in London.”
With at least three films out this year – The Road Within, Anita B, and Moonwalkers – Sheehan is firmly taking steps away from the Dublin gangs and teenage misfits.
What could be next? “Broadway,” is his answer. But not musical theatre – unless “it’s ‘I Can’t Sing- The Musical!” Well, he clearly knows his limits.
The 13th Jameson Dublin International Film Festival takes place until 29 March. Robert Sheehan will also appear at an Actors in Conversation event in the Tearchers Club tomorrow at 3pm.
Festival highlights include The Breach (Tuesday 24 March in the Light House at 8pm), and Irish horror The Canal (Saturday 38 March, the Light House at 8.30pm), starring Rupert Evans and Antonia Campell Hughes.
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Wow, housing crisis, healthcare in a mess, judiciary suspending sentences of thugs, prisoners being let out early due to lack of capacity, people working full time but struggling to make ends meet, nurses emigrating while we trawl the world looking for nurses, I could go on and on…….but Michael Martin wants to ban sun beds, Jesus ….use your time to do something useful.
@Eddie Garvey: Multiple things can be done at the same time.. jesus fkin wept like..
@Ian: Yes, multiple things can, but he chooses to do none.
@Eddie Garvey: With skin cancer being the fastest growing cancer in Ireland (more than 13,000 new cases (over 12,000 non-melanoma skin cancers and 1,100 melanomas) diagnosed each year, I’d say reducing these numbers is “something useful”.
@Jack Hayes: “7% of the population using sunbeds and 3% regularly” seems very high!
No point, it’s only chavs that use them anyways so who cares
@Eddie Garvey: tell us ye love sunbeds without telling us ye love sunbeds !
@Ian: While obviously the above sentiment is predictable I’m not so sure we do anything but make life harder for ourselves.
@Eddie Garvey: Your wasting your time talking about the Bertie Kisser who has been
fooling the people for 40 years
Can we possibly, just maybe, allow grown adults to make up their own minds? Don’t like it? don’t do it/use it/get one/smoke/drink/eat whatever it is but allow us to be a free thinking people
@Isla Carabine: The problem is that grown adults are destroying themselves and are a drain on the health system and public finances because of bad habits!
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: Public finance’s? You mean the taxes the public pays which in turn pays for the health system? Our health system isn’t drained because people are using sunbeds. It’s drained because of poor management and running.
@Ger Whelan: Yes. Well done. Public finances = made up in part of income tax. There is a lot of money spent treating people from issues ranging from skin cancer, to addiction, to obesity…..etc all due to people damaging themselves by poor lifestyle choices….. It is also drained by poor management. Wasted money in the health sector is not down to one thing. People looking after themselves would save a lot of money and resources. Thanks for missing the point completely.
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: Yes, but we always legislate for the minority. It’s driving people nuts.
@Isla Carabine:
We all want freedom,but we also owe it to the younger upcoming generation to lead by example
If we allowed them to do all of those things,including drug taking,the country,and health system would fall apart
How’s about a ban on RTE?
@Padraig O’Brien: All we’ll be left with is Virgin Media channels. No thanks.
Who does Mehole think he is? Justin Trudeau?
Skin cancer is the fastest growing cancer in Ireland. There are over 13,000 new cases of skin cancer diagnosed each year. If you have ever used a sunbed your risk of melanoma increases by 20% and using it before the age of 35 increases your risk by almost 60%. But the usuals whinging here … even if it comes to trying to reduce these numbers.
@Jack Hayes: if you want to help try to find a reason for the global excess mortality rate. I will give you a clue. It is not because of sun beds nor is it because I had a bag of tayto when I was seven
@Oh Mammy: were they cheese and onion or smokey bacon flavoured tayto?
@Ger Whelan: without a doubt it was the smokey bacon. The smoke did not come from organic wood.
@Oh Mammy: But nobody is talking about excess mortality, they’re talking about increased cases of skin cancer – or is that a global conspiracy now too?
@Jason Memail: why do you have to wait till everyone is talking? Independent, critical thinking is what’s needed. Sunbeds are nonsense. I do not doubt they are harmful but nonetheless a distraction. No one was talking about Biden being incapacitated until last week. And that was an easy one.
@Oh Mammy: Here I thought we were living longer.
@Thesaltyurchin: you are behind the times. Update your reading.
@Oh Mammy: I’m talking about skin cancer, not any ‘global excess mortality’, Dim Bulb.
Ah he’s back from globe trotting and saving the planet.good man micháel
Mehole.again…stop now journal just stop
Six articles about mehole this week,there’s other chancers out there too
Don’t sun-beds boost the immune system in areas where the population don’t get enough Vitamin D? Maybe we should all use them, not to be browner, just to subsidise our sunless existence.
@Thesaltyurchin: you are better off taking large doses (50,000 mcg) of vitamin d
@Oh Mammy: I was reaching a bit far there in fairness :)
Its proven that sunbeds cause skin cancer and when your in your twenties you don’t realize that later in life you will pay for the sun bed treatments with skin cancer that can kill. Skin cancer becomes a life changing experience for people that get the cancer and it becomes a ailment that is avoidable and a drain on the health service. Choice is good but the choice of giving yourself skin cancer later in life is not a choice a person should have.
What’s that? Mr. Burns wants to block out the Sun?!
I support The ban on him commenting anything
Nice, no more orange lady ?
Where these not banned in the 80s and 90s. Why were they allowed to start up again.
@Colette Byrne: (a) They were not (b) they were not.
have your say