Colm Meaney, a tall, curly-haired Irish actor with the face of a cherubic schoolboy, has lived in Los Angeles since 1986, but he doesn't miss Ireland at all.
How could he? He's constantly going back - to work. In the past four years Meaney has returned home to shoot "The Commitments," "Far and Away," "Into the West," the unreleased "War of the Buttons" and his newest film, "The Snapper," which opens on Friday."The Snapper" (the reference is to a child, or whippersnapper) was filmed in Dublin, the hometown of the 40-year-old actor.
The film, directed by Stephen Frears, is based on the second book in the trilogy of the Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, which also includes "The Commitments" (made into a film by Alan Parker in 1991) and "The Van."
In "The Commitments," which chronicled the rise and fall of a Dublin rhythm-and-blues band, Meaney had a small role as the band manager's father. In "The Snapper" he is Des, a father once again, but this time he has the lead, and he faces a classic parental problem: how to handle the fact that his unwed daughter is pregnant.
The film's first big surprise is that Meaney doesn't go ballistic. "Twenty years ago, the guy wouldn't have reacted this way," he said. "He's a fairly normal, lumpen, blinkered kind of guy. And obviously he's profoundly shocked. But he won't let the `shame' or the inconvenience of her pregnancy destroy his feelings for her. It's post-feminist consciousness there."
Meaney's political take on the film is second nature to him - he has been an activist since high school in Dublin, when he was practically kicked out for his involvement in student protests.
Instead, he quit and took advantage of a government program to train fishermen. Meaney had actually been interested in acting and had taken a year's worth of classes at a Dublin drama school. But acting seemed like a remote dream until a chance visit to the venerable Abbey Theater in Dublin reset his course.
"I asked the lady at the box office whether there was a school of acting there." It turned out that Meaney was just in time for afternoon auditions, and three days later he was enrolled in the Abbey's drama school. In two years he was asked to join the company. "It was very smooth," Meaney said, with some understatement.
In his early 20s he moved to London and became part of a small, leftist theater company called 784. "We played everything from major theaters in London to workingmen's clubs in Wales," Meaney said. "It was pretty wild. My future wife, Bairbre Dowling, called it the scrambled brains period."
He first visited the United States in 1979, and shuttled between New York and London, continuing to do theater.
"I began to realize that the only way to make a decent living was to work in film or television. And the only place you can do that is Los Angeles." He moved west in 1986, landing guest-starring roles in television series such as "Moonlighting."
His movie career began auspiciously in 1987 with John Huston's last picture, "The Dead." "That was an extraordinary experience," Meaney said. Huston directed the movie from a wheelchair, breathing with the help of a portable oxygen tank. "You know how on a film set, there are cables everywhere?" Meaney said. "Well, John's oxygen tank was plugged into a cable. Suddenly, while he was talking to someone, his machine stopped. He didn't notice it. And Tony, his son, said, `Dad, your machine has stopped.' And someone else came in and said, `His machine has stopped! His machine has stopped!' And John said, `Dammit, man, calm down. I have at least a minute!"'
In addition to his movies, Meaney now has a steady television job: He is in the second year of a six-year contract to play Chief Operating Officer O'Brien on "Deep Space Nine," a spinoff of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
In some ways, he said, television is more challenging (and, of course, more remunerative) than theater. "I'll tell you, learning speeches from Shakespeare is easier than learning technobabble for `Star Trek.' Shakespeare makes sense. This stuff doesn't."