The unbeatable Stephen Rea

>> Cine Gael rolls out the green carpet for the Irish thespian

by JOANNE LATIMER

Stephen Rea is a good sport. More than that, he's considerate. Our telephone interview was scheduled for Monday and he called on Sunday to report that his cell number had changed. For a star of this stature, this is impressive.

Then, on Monday, he didn't mind discussing the state of Irish cinema--a conversation point he must cover a lot. And, as further proof of his good nature, he has agreed to come to Montreal for a few days this week to attend Cine-Gael's partial retrospective of his films. For a household-name actor with over 40 films to his credit, this is remarkably generous behaviour.

On the phone from Calgary, Rea doesn't give off the icy tone of a celebrity on guard. He chats in an easy-going manner about the history of Irish film--which mirrors his own history as an actor--from his early days in Neil Jordan's Angel.

"In 1980, when Neil [Jordan] said he was going to make a feature film, it was mind-blowing," recalls Rea. "It was the first Irish film that you can truly call an Irish film--where everyone involved was Irish. In 1980, that was almost inconceivable."

The problem of determining national credentials for Irish films vexes Rea. He has nothing against Angela's Ashes, but isn't sure it qualifies as an Irish film. The director and two lead actors, after all, are English.

"It's so hard to decide these things," he adds. "Films like that are of Irish interest, but they don't emanate from a native industry or reflect the kind of work that's going on. There are a lot of Irish films being made for an American sensibility or a world market, like Waking Ned Devine. It's going back to a whimsical version of Ireland that modern Irish people wouldn't recognize."

Making trouble

Born in Belfast in 1949, Rea is perplexed by the way Northern Ireland, in particular, comes across in films. "The North is badly represented in a lot of movies and television," he notes. "Movies about the Irish problem should be serious enough to want to enlighten us in some way. Otherwise it's a waste of time. But my view is that enduring The Troubles is bad enough without having to watch movies about it. It would be lovely to stop making films about naked politics."

Rea's first film as a director is in the works. Obviously it isn't going to be about the inner workings of the IRA. The film, No Man's Land, is based on a true story set around the Irish War of Independence. "The funding isn't all there yet," he reports. "But we're already talking about who is and who is not allowed to be in it. If you get X number of million dollars, then you need recognizable people. So already, in some small way, you're compromised."

Rea is a bit worried about "recognizable people." They are stars who come with rewrites, he says, often altering entire storylines. He's also concerned about the challenges of doing a noir period film. "It's easy to get caught up in the mechanism of a genre," he explains. "So I have to think very hard about how to shoot it."

Authentically Irish

Rea has certainly paid his dues on film sets. His filmography includes most of Neil Jordan's oeuvre, including The Crying Game, In Dreams, Interview With a Vampire, The Butcher Boy and The End of the Affair. He also delivered a hilarious performance in Robert Altman's Pret-a-Porter as a vain fashion photographer. He was in This Is My Father, the first Irish-Canadian co-production under the new treaty between the two countries, and recently starred with Sarah Polley in both Guinevere and The Life Before This.

"Neil's films touch on The Troubles, but only to head off into another direction," says Rea. "That's okay. I don't think that Angel or The Crying Game are fueled by The Troubles. They're about something more metaphysical than that."

So, does Rea ever get tired of being so Irish-identified? "I am Irish. I don't have any problem with it. I don't see why Gerard Depardieu can't be French. Why should Robert De Niro be anything but Italian-American? When Scorsese used authentic casting and used all those Italians, they all suddenly sounded terribly interesting. They sounded like real people. That's why I think I've always held onto the Irish thing. I want to keep some internal authenticity for myself." :

Stephen Rea will introduce Trojan Eddie at the Cinema Parisien on March 17 at 7pm and Bad Behaviour and Angel on March 18, at 3pm and 7pm respectively, at the Concordia's Cinema DeSeve