Silence is golden

That is, he could, were it not for his resonant North Dublin accent and the discreet hints of gray that are beginning to appear in his lustrous dark hair.
At 35, the native of Drumcondra, is making his New York theatrical debut at the American Airlines Theatre in the Roundabout Theatre Company?s revival of Harold Pinter?s ?The Caretaker.? He?s playing Mick, the menacing young brother of the mentally fragile Aston, who has brought the title character, Davies, back to their disastrous dwelling in West London.
Actually, Gillen?s local debut begins in silence, with one of the longest and most profound pauses in stage history. The actor, who is probably best known to American audiences for the strong performance he gave in Terry George?s fine but neglected film ?Some Mother?s Son,? in which he played Helen Mirren?s son, has a distinct take on the seemingly endless silence with which the Pinter play opens.
?It?s all specified in the script,? he said last week, ?even to the number of seconds and everything I do in that silence, so there wasn?t any room for reinterpretation. It says ?lights up on a young man in a leather jacket, sitting on a bed. He stares ahead expressionlessly, looks in turn at various objects in the room, and stares straight ahead for 30 seconds.? So everything there is specified.?
Even so, the pause is long enough, potentially, to unsettle a few of the more nervous members of the audience. The thought has entered the young actor?s mind that at some performance, he might hear the words ?say something, why don?t you?? coming at him from the house.
It hasn?t happened yet, but there was one afternoon when Gillen thought it was about to. ?There was an elderly gent,? he recalls sitting in the first row, and at some point he started lifting his arms and shrugging his shoulders. He turned to his wife, and I thought to myself, ?What?s he going to do?? ?
The Roundabout has done ?The Caretaker? twice before the new production, first in 1973 and again in 1981. For the new staging, director David Jones, an old Pinter hand, recruited an Aston, Kyle MacLachlan, and a Davies, Patrick Stewart, both of them more familiar presences than the Mick with whom they found themselves working.
For an actor in his prime and headed for something approaching stardom, Gillen is refreshingly unassuming. The youngest of six sons and daughters of a Dublin draftsman and his wife, a recently retired nurse, Gillen was rather casually expected to follow the path his siblings had trot, namely to college and then into a professions. ?I could have done all that if I?d wanted to,? he said.
Instead, he went into the theater. ?I?ve been acting for a living for more than half my life,? he said. ?I got my union card when I was 17.?
Gillen was involved in a group called the Dublin Youth Theatre.
?I came to it by chance,? he said. ?It was in the area where we lived. It was right across from the church where I used to be an altar boy. I had a friend who was something of a tearaway, and they sent him to the theater group so he wouldn?t get into anything worse like stealing and all that. His sister was part of a Catholic youth group and she pushed him into the theatre group.?
The young actor-to-be followed and found things considerably different from what he?d expected.
?The people I met there turned out to be a lot more interesting than I thought,? Gillen said. ?I figured I?d meet a lot of posh kids, but, in fact, I didn?t. There were some posh kids there, and they were OK, but it was mostly tough guys. That surprised me.?
Gillen was about 14 at that point. ?We did a lot of plays at the Project Arts Center, which was the happening place in Dublin at that time,? he said.
Once he got started Gillen did what young actors everywhere learn to do. ?I used to gate-crash auditions,? he said. ?All the first jobs I got I got by hustling my way into auditions. I didn?t have an agent, because there really weren?t agents in Dublin in those days, except for a couple of shady ones. It?s all different now.?
One of Gillen?s first film roles came along in 1987 when director Jack Clayton gave him a small part in his adaptation of Brian Moore?s novel ?The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne.? ?I think he was impressed by the rags I was wearing,? Gillen said. ?There were holes in my sleeves and tears everywhere. He paid me 700 quid, which was a fortune for me.?
The actor, who was not yet 20, used the money for a trip to the U.S., where one of his three brothers was working as a film editor, but he soon returned and went to London.
It was an Irish play that motivated Gillen?s move. ?I hustled my way into an audition for Billy Roche?s ?A Handful of Stars,? which is part of his Wexford trilogy,? he recalled. ?They got me a British Equity card, and the play was a hit.?
The actor, his wife and their two small children live in London?s Finsbury Park area. Gillen has known his wife, Olivia O?Flanagan, for most of his life.
?I first met her in a bar in Dublin when I was 15,? he said. ?It was Halloween night and I was painted blue and wearing a shroud.?
Gillen still has occasional doubts about a career as an actor. ?Sometimes,? he said, ?I?m not sure it?s what I want to do for the rest of my life. It looks like it probably is at this stage.?
He doesn?t see himself as a fully developed actor, however. ?I?m definitely better than I was,? he said.