From Summer Issue 62
Glass talks to Irish actor Kerry Condon, whose eclectic 30-year career on stage and screen now sees her enter blockbuster territory with F1
Kerry Condon doesn’t believe in luck. She does however believe in hard work – the kind of unfiltered dedication that every time she appears on screen, her presence feels so unforced it borders on elemental. For all the shimmer that surrounds her nearly three-decade long career, she’s the sort of woman who’d rather talk about the collective effort behind a film than herself.
When we sit down for our interview, she spends the first few minutes gushing, not about her performance, but about the layered force behind her latest project, F1, a film set in the world of Formula One.
“There were so many amazing departments working on the movie down to the ADs [assistant directors] and PAs [production assistants] – it was such a difficult thing to pull off, so seeing it all come together makes me so excited for people to see it,” she tells me, having finally watched the final cut days earlier. “Whether you like Formula One or not, it’s sort of irrelevant.”
Photograph: Julien Sage
And she’s right. F1 is the type of release that is difficult to ignore. Directed by Joseph Kosinski – Tron: Legacy and Top Gun: Maverick – and starring Brad Pitt (who also shares production credits), Damson Idris, Javier Bardem and Tobias Menzies, Condon has arrived at a moment so wrapped in anticipation that it’s palpable. But she isn’t nervous. She’s unflinchingly prepared. At 42, junctures like these don’t feel like chance. They feel earned.
Born in Thurles, Ireland, Condon’s childhood was marked with one overarching lodestar – to act. “I still to this day think about where it came from,” she says. “It was almost this preordained thing I have where I don’t remember when I didn’t want to be an actress.”
Neither of her parents worked in the arts. Her two older sisters and younger brother showed no interest in drama and, at the time, Ireland wasn’t exactly the epicentre of cinematic ambition. Still, she was convinced she could make the transition. “I used to think that Julia Roberts was a regular person before she was Julia Roberts. So everyone has to be a regular person before they’re successful. So why not me?.”
Photograph: Julien Sage
As a teenager, Condon took matters into her own hands, writing letters to directors and production companies asking to be considered for auditions. One of those individuals was Alan Parker. She was drawn to his knack for selecting unknown actors and catapulting them into the limelight as he had done with the cast of Bugsy Malone and Midnight Express. Two years after writing to him, the 16-year-old found herself in the final round of Parker’s next film, Angela’s Ashes.
“I finally got to meet him,” she recalls. “I think he kind of knew that it was more than just a job, that it was everything to me, and it really, truly was everything at that point that I had. I don’t know what my other options were. I couldn’t afford to go to drama school, so he changed my life because once I got that role, I got an agent and that’s half the battle.”
The early years of Condon’s career were marked with a string of triumphant firsts. In 2001, Martin McDonagh hand-picked her for his play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore for the Royal Shakespeare Company. That same year, she also became the youngest actress to play Ophelia in Hamlet, again for the RSC; and by 2009 she received the Lucille Lortel Award for her performance in The Cripple of Inishmaan.
“It all happened very quickly but I was very much learning on the job,” she explains, crediting those experiences as places where she mastered all the technicalities that drama school would have taught her. Surrounded by leading professionals, it was outside the rehearsal room where she felt her inexperience. “I felt a little out of my depth,” she admits. “I came from the countryside and went to an all-girls convent school. I didn’t wear makeup or anything. I had a lot to learn.”
Photograph: Julien Sage
It was the two years on the set of Rome in 2005 – HBO’s juggernaut $100m historical drama – that Condon’s acting evolution accelerated. Rendering a new identity as a leading character on screen, she was required to present a different form of vulnerability to audiences. “I had to be naked – it was part of my contract and it felt like a big thing,” she recalls.
“This was an American TV show and it was something new. It was a huge learning experience for me as an actress.” She counts this requirement as seminal to her trajectory. “Because of the nudity aspect, I felt like I could do anything, like there was nothing now that could phase me. I still feel like that a little bit. After doing my horse racing role in Luck [2011 US TV series starring Dustin Hoffman], which was so difficult, those two shows made me go ‘there is nothing that could ruffle my feathers or make me nervous anymore’.”
Photograph: Julien Sage
Malleability has been a rare quality that Condon quietly possesses. Her love for the craft is all-encompassing, allowing her to transcend genre with remarkable ease. “I always wanted to do everything and I really mean everything,” she asserts.
We play around the topic of what is considered “artistic”, noting some actors avoid certain roles, not out of principle, but pride. “I’m the one who’s calling the shots in my career and I am not going to be judged. I went out wanting to do everything and to do as many accents and different parts that involve different things.” Her perspective is full of truisms, unhindered by the glitz and glamour of success.
“You can be artistic but then you’re going to be broke; like, good luck with that,” she says without cynicism. “The majority of people are working actors their whole life. I have to work for money like everybody else on the planet has to. It’s a really privileged position to be picking and choosing.”
Condon’s filmography reflects this unpretentious ethos. She’s voiced F.R.I.D.A.Y in the Marvel Universe, appeared in indie dramas and held her own as a series regular on Better Call Saul. She doesn’t rank one project above another but sees them all as essentials to the recipe that has led her to today. “You work with all these different people and they’re all strings to your bow,” she says proudly. “I would still like to think I conduct myself like this and am open to opportunities.”
Photograph: Julien Sage
From the very beginning, however, she had one stalwart supporter: filmmaker Martin McDonagh. “I never had a mentor or somebody who was telling me that I was great – I had to be the one who was encouraging myself,” she says to emphasise how the director was the exception. “But even when I wasn’t working on his projects, he was always rooting for me.”
Together, they worked on four projects until 2021, crossing from stage to screen and constantly entering new realms. One memorable instance was when he asked her to shave her head, not once but twice. “He does demand a level of commitment,” she says. “It ended up being very empowering but I think it mattered to him a lot because he remembered it and I think that’s why he cast me again as he knew I had given everything he asked for and more. It didn’t go unnoticed.”
In 2022, Condon along with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, got together with McDonagh for his Irish tragicomedy, The Banshees of Inisherin. It swept the award season with nine Academy Award nominations and 10 BAFTA nods, including a BAFTA win for Best Supporting Actress for Condon, and her first Oscar nomination. “I did feel like I earned it,” she reflects. “It meant a lot getting a bit of recognition a little bit later on in my career.”
Photograph: Julien Sage
With a formidable body of work and a long list of critical praise, Condon is levelling up to movie star territory. F1 marks a career-turning point, and one rightly deserved. This film has all the markers of being a blockbuster but its most prominent feature is the sheer scale of its $300m production. “We were allowed to film during the races – so much of it was live,” she explains. Steering away from studios, director Kosinski wanted authenticity. Over the two years of filming, it was shot during actual Formula One race weekends across the globe, including Silverstone, Monza and the Las Vegas Strip Circuit.
“Just that alone is such a radical idea of how to film this and my theatre background played a big part in this for me,” she says as we focus on her role as Kate, the technical director of the team in focus. “We only got one or two takes and that was it. It was one of those things where I could see that all of my experience came to fruition and helped me for this role.”
The pressure for everyone was constant – and real. When the cast crossed over the line from script to reality there was no room to turn back: “We couldn’t go back, not even to get our makeup checked as real cars were driving past. So, once you’re sitting on the pit wall, that’s it. We are doing it.”
Photograph: Julien Sage
Despite the sheer ambition of its creation, Kosinski remained collected at all points: “I can’t explain how nice it was to work for someone who, no matter how stressful everything got, never showed any sign of stress – he was calm all the time.”
For all the hard work her role required, Condon speaks of the camaraderie that existed on the set. “Every department was under the same amount of pressure, so we would wish each other good luck beforehand and celebrate when we had done the scene,” she explains. “It didn’t feel like the cast and crew were separate like in other films, we were one unit, in it together.” She smiles, her affection for the experience unmistakable: “It was just the most fun I’ve ever had ever on any job.”
For Condon success is never about singularity, it’s about the whole. While hard work is the marrow of her story, it’s her kindness and generosity that shapes her into one of those stars whose appeal lies well beyond the screen. Outside of all of this, she owns a farm with 10 rescue horses, a dog and the new addition of a cat. Before we finish our conversation, she tells me: “One of the good things about success is being able to share it with others, especially with these little ones.”
by Imogen Clark
Photographer: JULIEN SAGE
Stylist: GEMMA FERRI
Hair: SAMI KNIGHT using KERASTASE
Makeup: FIONA STILES using CHANEL BEAUTY
Manicurist: MICHELLE NGUYEN
Prop stylist: RENNA PILAR
Photography assistant: VINNIE MAGGIO
Styling assistant: HANNAH LOEWEN
Talent: KERRY CONDON
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