With her new F1 movie currently in cinemas, Kerry Condon is the actress everyone’s talking about.
These days, Kerry is a regular on the red carpet and in her latest role, the Banshees of Inisherin star appears opposite Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt.
But what do we know about her rise to fame, or as Colin Farrell described Kerry, the star who became an overnight sensation after 20 years?
First brush with Hollywood
Kerry was just 15 years old when she had her first brush with Hollywood. It was 1998 and the Thurles teenager had used the money she’d made working in a sandwich shop to buy a ticket – and a new top and skirt – for a charity screening of the movie, The Man In The Iron Mask.
Much to her dismay, its big star Leonardo DiCaprio pulled out from attending the day before the Dublin screening, prompting Kerry to return the skirt – she kept the top though.
On the night of the glamorous event, she managed to catch a glimpse of John Malkovich as he mingled with fans. She also spotted the film’s director, Randall Wallace, leaving the cinema and ran up to him to hand him a card which read: ‘Dancer, Singer, Actress’. Her mum’s telephone number was added as a footnote, on the off-chance he might wish to make contact.
She never heard from Wallace, but undeterred, wrote to Alan Parker, director of The Commitments, a year later, outlining her desire to be an actor. This time her direct approach worked and after auditioning for a role in Angela’s Ashes, Parker cast Kerry in her first on-screen role.
Kerry has come a long way from Tipperary and the young girl with business cards and her mammy’s phone number. Growing up in Thurles with two sisters and a brother, the teenage Kerry dreamed of being an actor. She worked several parttime jobs during the summer holidays to pay for Saturday morning drama classes in Dublin.
At the age of 16, she landed that debut role in Angela’s Ashes, playing a consumptive teenage girl with whom the young Frank McCourt has a sexual relationship. By the time she’d finished school, Kerry had already appeared in Parker’s film and Ballykissangel.
It was on the set of the popular TV series that she first met Colin Farrell, who she would go on to work with in the 2003 film Intermission, receiving an unforgettable, onscreen punch in the face from his character Lehiff at the start of the flick. The pair teamed up again as brother and sister in Martin McDonagh’s multi-award-winning The Banshees Of Inisherin.
Kerry lived in Dublin for a while, enrolling in the nowdefunct acting degree course at the Samuel Beckett Centre in Trinity College. In an interview with The Irish Times in 2008, she said: ‘I did it for something to do when I wasn’t working, but actually I only went for one day. I mean I had a career already, so I didn’t really need to go to college. ‘I don’t mean that in an arrogant way, but I was already earning, and working was more important to me than training.’
On the first day of class, Kerry was offered a role in the film Rat, starring Pete Postlethwaite, Imelda Staunton and David Wilmot. She took the job and never went back to college. She later worked with Wilmot again in the Royal Shakespeare Company and the pair remain good friends.
Theatre roles
At the age of 19, Kerry moved to London and landed her first theatre role, aged 18, in a McDonagh play, The Lonesome West. He came to see her on stage in Liverpool and was so impressed, he offered her the role of Mairead in the premiere production of his next project, The Lieutenant Of Inishmore at the RSC.
This was the start of an important friendship and working relationship, with Kerry going on to appear in McDonagh’s play The Cripple Of Inishmaan, his Oscar-winning film Three Billboards Outside Of Ebbing, Missouri and Banshees. In fact, he wrote the part of Siobhán with Kerry in mind.
When she heard McDonagh was revisiting his Irish work after Three Billboards, Kerry was ‘thrilled’, as she later told Deadline. ‘I knew there was a part for me in it,’ she said. ‘And because the Irish plays, I felt, were so brilliant and not a lot of people had seen them.’
Around the same time, Kerry was cast in another RSC production, playing Ophelia in Hamlet. She was the youngest actor to appear in the role for the company, although reviews at the time were mixed. This was, in large part, down to the fact that the director asked Kerry to use her own accent as Ophelia, which jarred with some critics.
Since those early days of her prolific career, Kerry has appeared in an eclectic range of productions on the big and small studio films including the Avengers series and Spider-Man: Homecoming. She also starred in the 2023 Irish action thriller film In The Land Of Saints And Sinners, opposite Liam Neeson and her Rome co-star Ciarán Hinds.
The Banshees Of Inisherin
But it was her portrayal of Siobhán in The Banshees Of Inisherin which propelled her into the spotlight, earning her an Oscar nomination and IFTA and BAFTA wins.
In the black tragicomedy, Kerry plays the sister of Pádraic (Farrell), who finds himself at an impasse when his lifelong pal and drinking partner Colm (Brendan Gleeson) abruptly calls time on their friendship, with serious consequences for both. Kerry’s character is level-headed, intelligent and independent, serving as a foil to the rest of the islanders, who can’t see beyond the confines of Inisherin.
In one particular scene, which broke the hearts of audiences, Siobhán gently rejects the earnest romantic advances of Barry Keoghan’s childlike Dominic. Shifting nervously and wiping his nose on his sleeve, he asks, ‘What I was wanting to ask you was – something along the lines of – should’ve planned, this really. What I was wanting to ask you was… You probably wouldn’t ever want to, I don’t know… fall in love with a boy like me, would you?’, to which Siobhán replies, ‘No, Dominic, I don’t think so, love.’
When he asks her if she might reconsider in the future, ‘Like, when I’m your age?’, Siobhán shakes her head, to which Dominic then says, ‘Well, there goes that dream. I best go over there and do whatever that thing over there I was gonna do was.’ The scene is possibly the film’s most iconic, even going viral on TikTok.
All four lead actors received Oscar nominations for their performances in Banshees, with Kerry attending the awards ceremony with her younger brother, who she describes as her ‘lucky charm’. It wasn’t the first time she’d attended the Oscars. In 2012, she joined the cast of Terry and Oorlagh George’s nominated short film The Shore. It went on to win the Live Action Short Film Category that year.
While Banshees left empty-handed, despite nine Oscar nominations, it fared better at the Golden Globes, winning gongs for both Farrell and McDonagh. In his acceptance speech for his Best Actor award, Farrell thanked his co-stars and described Kerry as an overnight sensation – after 20 years.
A few days later, Kerry was approached by F1 director Joseph Kosinski, who wanted to sound her out about the role of Kate McKenna. He explained it was a female lead role in a massive blockbuster, which was something she had always wanted to do. Another bonus was that she was told she could keep her Irish accent for the part.
The F1 shoot took two years to complete, with filming taking place all over the world and at real events, such as 2024’s season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. In the film, Pitt stars as former F1 driver Sonny Hayes, who is coaxed out of retirement to partner rookie teammate Joshua Pearce, played by Damson Idris, at the fictional APXGP team.
Kerry received help in her role as technical director from Co Fermanagh woman Bernie Collins, who is a Formula 1 strategy analyst for Sky Sports and F1TV and former F1 strategy engineer for the Aston Martin team.
Speaking about the two-year shoot, Kerry said she was ‘paid to have fun’ and described working with Pitt as a ‘dream come true’.
‘He’s been in the business so long and he’s worked with some amazing people, I just wanted to be in his top ten co-stars,’ she said at a press day at the racing track Goodwood. ‘That was my aim.’
Not surprisingly, in every promotional interview Kerry has given for the new movie, she’s been asked about playing Pitt’s love interest.
In a chat with American TV host Stephen Colbert, she revealed that the romantic scenes were scheduled for 8.30am on a Thursday morning, while on the Today show in the US, she joked that she had to earn her money by working so closely with Pitt.
Private life
While the Hollywood star was regularly snapped by paparazzi at various F1 Grand Prix events during the shoot, Kerry preferred to stay low-key.
She famously likes to keep her private life out of the public gaze, although she did tell the RTÉ Guide in 2018, ‘I don’t really care if I never get married. I don’t really care if I never have kids. There’s loads of things I’ve planned for my life. So, I’ve gone on and made plans for my life regardless of those things happening to me.’
Those plans include living on a farm outside Seattle with several former thoroughbred racehorses, who she likes to spoil and play ‘mammy’ to. A keen rider herself, her father bred horses when she was growing up back home in Thurles.
Karry has previously said that the fame and adulation that go hand in hand with the job are things she’s not really interested in. Being a good actor is all that matters to her. In that aspect, she isn’t too dissimilar to her F1 character.
In an interview with ELLE Canada, Kerry says of Kate McKenna’s drive: ‘It’s a general thing in terms of wanting to be successful in her career. I think anyone can relate to that. She has a winner’s attitude, and that’s kind of what the sport is – winning is her way to success.