New York Daily News Story/Interview by Elizabeth Weitzman May 30, 2001
Original Interview Not Online

In 'Love,'
A One-Woman Holy War

By ELIZABETH WEITZMAN
Special to The News

Coaxed into taking pictures on Lafayette St., Orla Brady gets some second looks from curious passersby.

But if her new film, "A Love Divided," gets half the notice here that it did in her native Ireland, she won't need a photo shoot to attract a crowd the next time she comes to town.

"A Love Divided," which opens Friday at the Quad, is the true story of a woman caught in the issue of religious intermarriage in Ireland.

Brady stars as Sheila Cloney, a young Protestant woman who agrees to rear her children Catholic when she marries in 1949. But when the local priest demands that her two daughters attend his school, she resists, fleeing with them to Scotland. The result is an increasingly violent Catholic boycott against the Protestants in her hometown.

"Normally, I don't have this kind of confidence, but from the moment I read the script, I thought, 'This is mine. I absolutely have to do it,'" says Brady. "What really gets me going is somebody who'll go all the way, someone who's completely passionate and determined and uncompromising."

While the film was embraced by many in Ireland, others weren't so effusive.

"There was a bit of offense taken by some Catholic people," she acknowledges. "My argument is that we told the story very evenhandedly. I remember my grandmother's generation, when the priest's word was absolute. When an ideology takes hold, as we know, terrible things can happen."

Though she considers herself an atheist, the Dublin-bred Brady was reared "Catholic down the line," and even went to a convent school. It was an experience that she believes may have led her to the freedom of the stage.

"There was a shaming that went on, I think. You were supposed to be an acquiescent, nice girl. That's fairly repressive."

Brady says things are quite different in Ireland, where she often works in theater, and the U.K., where she has made several BBC dramas.

"I'm aware that if I worked over here, I'd be as insecure as actresses are made to be here." In America, she observes, "They want women to see and aspire to perfection. Whereas our sensibility is a bit different, in that we want to see people we can identify with onscreen.

"Of course," she adds with a smile, "if someone came along and said, 'Be in a big Hollywood film,' great! But am I prepared to do all the things that would bring me to that point?"

As an example, she points to her very first love scene, for a BBC film.

"I knew we'd be doing it naked. So I immediately joined a gym, went for two sessions, and bored myself stupid. Real is better — and sexier. Why not just go with that?"

Original Publication Date: 5/30/01