It’s one of the traditions of this column that our article image is from the place where I think of the person first. There are challenges with this, obviously; I have to find that image, first off. And, of course, there’s the issue of people who are from behind the scenes or who pretty well exclusively do voicework. However, with Brendan Gleeson, we came across an interesting problem. Oh, sure, there’s his great work in Song of the Sea, The Secret of Kells, and The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists! But the problem was that the first places I thought of him were all films with, shall we say, issues. It’s enough to make me with I liked Martin McDonagh movies.

Now, his career goes back no few years, to the extent that the first place I think of him is a movie from 1992. (Featuring the nineties’ favourite Irishman Colm Meaney, too.) That movie, about the Irish immigration of the late nineteenth century and the Oklahoma Land Rush, featured a ton of Hollywood’s finest Irish people, plus a guy born in New York of generic European ancestry and a woman born in Honolulu to Australian parents of generic British ancestry. Gleeson does not, admittedly, particularly stand out, but it was enough to bring him to Hollywood’s notice.

The next movie I think of him in is from three years later. This is a much more noteworthy role in a movie that won many Oscars. If it’s talked about at all these days, however, it’s mostly because of the toxicity of its lead, whose passion project it was. Still, Gleeson was there as The Hero’s Childhood Best Friend, a role that actually attracted a little more notice. Because the movie was a smash, in addition to winning all kinds of awards, Gleeson was now in the collection of actors of at least vague familiarity, in his case when Colm Meaney was busy doing Star Trek, one assumes.

It would, come 2005, bring him into the orbit of The Movie Series That Needed Half The British Isles. His character stomped around being ominous and scaring children, and he would end up being quite the twist before returning to the series with the main character’s having to process that things were not as they had seemed for an entire school year. It’s frankly not the most challenging role in the series, but the series as a whole is not as well accepted as it was when it was made, because the creator is [checks notes] a rampaging bigot.

All in all, it’s better for Gleeson that he’s done so well in the independent films. Breakfast on Pluto still holds up. I liked Albert Nobbs. And the McDonagh brothers have apparently used his performances to great effect, not that I’ve seen his movies with either of them. The Coens have developed a fondness for him as well, it seems, and I really ought to get around to The Tragedy of Macbeth. Heck, my Patreon and Ko-fi supporters could probably even make me get over my “fondness for the source material” hesitance and make me watch Paddington and then watch him in Paddington 2.