In just a few short years, Domhnall Gleeson has put together the kind of leading-man career an actor twice his age would kill for: He's been the star of everything from indie favorites like Ex Machina to studio hits like About Time and Peter Rabbit. And he is, of course, also in fucking Star Wars.
His slight frame and youthful look, shock of red hair and all, belie his natural intensity. Funny, charming, and uncompromising all at once, he speaks in a low voice with a surprisingly thick Irish accent. As with his career, he can switch between affable and laser-focused in an instant. It's this kind of quality that makes him perfect for The Little Stranger, ostensibly a new ghost story from Lenny Abrahamson, director of Room. Gleeson plays Dr. Faraday, a post-war doctor tasked with rehabilitating a veteran holed up in an English mansion. Of course, nothing is quite as it seems, including Faraday himself. It's a stunning film that represents something of a departure for both Abrahamson and Gleeson. GQ sat down with the actor to talk about the emotional toll a character like Faraday can take on an actor, saying goodbye to the Star Wars franchise, and, yes, his dad Brendan (maybe you've heard of him).
GQ: I've seen you in a lot of stuff, but I don't think I've seen you use your natural accent in movies before.
Domhnall Gleeson: No! I'm trying to think. I had a tiny bit in Calvary that I use my own accent in. I did this tiny comedy called Crash Pad a few years ago, but that's it.
Now, first thing's first: How do you pronounce your name?
Okay: think of the word "tonal," and then just replace the T with a D.
Okay.
So go for it.
Domhnall.
Yeah, perfect. So that's exactly it. But people do not trust me when I tell them how to pronounce my name. I say it, and they go, "Dom-nall." I'm like, "No!"
So, The Little Stranger: It's a weird one, right? It's like a detective story, and a ghost story, but then also not really much of either.
Exactly. It's hard to describe. It's definitely a drama, but wrapped up in this ghost story. And then, there's the twist, which I won't talk about. It actually reminds me of Ex Machina. There's this secluded setting, and nobody knows who's manipulating who. In The Little Stranger you don't know if it's an outside force or coming from inside the house. And at the end, you're given the answer. And it all adds up perfectly in retrospect, but it's a very dramatic way of getting there.
This is your second movie with Lenny Abrahamson, after Frank. These are two very different films.
Lenny has never repeated himself in any of the movies that he's done. We had done Frank, and in the meantime, he had done Room. But when he sent me the script for The Little Stranger, I just couldn't stop reading it. I was fascinated by Faraday. Initially he was talking to me about a different character, but I was so drawn to Faraday. I said, "Look, I know I'm young, but I think I understand this man. I'm scared of him, and I think I understand him."
I think he was drawn to it for the same reasons that I was, which is that it's genre. It's a ghost story. You have this crumbling Downton Abbey world. The building's falling apart. The people are falling apart. And then it has something to say about class and desire and loneliness. I couldn't get it out of my head.
Would you describe your character as a good person? There's this moment where Caroline (Ruth Wilson) cuts off a romantic encounter with you and suddenly you're angry. You're shitty.
[laughs] Yeah. Again, I think that is similar to Ex Machina as well, because when you get to the end of that movie, you realize that our hero—or the person who's journey we've been following—did some pretty awful things to the other person. If he falls in love with Ava and believes her to be a person, and then he keeps her locked in a room and is happy going forward with the test, that's not okay. You know?
Right.
That's why Lenny was perfect to direct this: Because he understands that this guy we're following, we expect to be the good guy. And yet, he's got a lot of rage. The way Lenny described it to me, he said, "If you're carrying explosives, you walk carefully." Faraday's got to mind himself because he's got this jealousy and bitterness as well as desire. But he's really tamped them down inside.
That was a part of, just, socializing in that time period as well. Stiff upper lip and all that. Do you think he's worse than most?
More so than other people. The level of desire he has to be of the higher class is so in-built. And it's an impossible dream. He could get all the money in the world, and he will never be of that class. He will never be of that house. He could live in that house, and he will not belong there. So what he wants he can never have. And I think that is a hollowness in him that he knows he can't fill.
Damn.
I know.
Did you go method at all? Did you learn some weird shit about the post-war medical world?
I learned lots. The NHS was about to come in. I read a lot of notes from doctors at the time. I went to this special library where you can go and find all these books written by doctors at the time, memoir type things. There was an amazing book that I gave Lenny, as well, a description of a very depressed doctor. I held on to their notes.
You're from a family of actors. Was there ever a chance that you might do something else, or was this always on the cards?
I was interested in writing and directing. That's what I went to college for, but I think I've become better at acting than I am at either of those two things. I'm interested in telling stories, essentially. My father is an incredible actor, and in a way, it made me realize it was possible. But in another way, it made me think. Well, I can't do it as well as he does it. So, what's the point? My brother, Brian, is a phenomenal actor as well. So, there was already an actor in the family, even when I began.
I remember when you guys showed up in mother!, kind of unexpectedly.
That was the most fun thing ever. It was great! You turn up in a Darren Aronofsky film, opposite Jennifer Lawrence? That was so much good fun. I loved that. I'm very proud to be in that film.
And Star Wars IX comes out next year.
Yeah.
I suppose you're beginning the process of saying goodbye to the franchise. How are you feeling about it all?
It's easy. Those films are so much fun, but I'm not the center of them, you know? Hux is a fun character to play, and it's very certain what he needs to be. It's just fun. It's a great crack. Saying goodbye to something like The Little Stranger was much, much harder. I took a lot of time off after I finished that cause I was just drained. I was carrying something over the course of that movie that I didn't even realize was there until it was all over, until they called cut on the last take. Suddenly it was overwhelming. Whatever it is that he's carrying around, that explosive thing, it worked its way in.
How did you decompress after shooting?
I took six months off.
Really? Wow.
It's by far the longest break I've taken, but it was necessary. I did a short film with my dad that I really enjoyed, but that was only four days, you know? I felt like I had given all I had to give. The well had run dry.
What was the vibe on set?
There was actually a lot of laughter. Lenny's really funny. Ruth is outrageously funny.
I love that Black Mirror episode with you and Haley Atwell, "Be Right Back." That, I imagine, was very emotionally draining, as well.
It was short though, and I also felt very full when I did that. I had just done About Time, which was all about love and it was all about connection. I think for Hayley it was much, much harder.
The way you've talked about taking breaks and being full, is there like a fuel gauge for you? Where sometimes you need to top off, or do a different thing?
[Michael] Fassbender always fascinated me because he was able to spill so quickly from job into job. I always used to take a lot of time off to prepare and do all that sort of stuff. And Fassbender, somehow, was able to prepare and keep working at the same time. He stunned me with his ability to go from role to role. I tried that for a while, and realized that I don't think that I can. The only time I've ever gone to completely empty is with Little Stranger. Even if the best filmmaker in the world had come along, or Lenny had said, "We're making something else." I just wouldn't have been able to do it. That's the only time where I've said, "I can't work."
That quality you see in Michael Fassbender, that kind of ties into Frank, right? Where you can't compare your process and you can't compare your creativity to someone else.
Absolutely right. And my character in that is this guy who's not that talented, who's worried that he's not talented. And he's looking up to this man who is, undoubtedly, talented and has something ephemeral. It is not difficult to put yourself into those shoes when you're standing up to Fassbender and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and you feel like these people do all this stuff that I can't do, and I wish I could.
Like you said before, your dad is an extremely accomplished actor. Did you ever feel like that might be a hindrance? Did you try to disassociate yourself for a while?
No, I didn't. I'm very different to my dad in lots of ways. The way that we work is very different to each other. I wish I was more like him, in lots of ways, but I'm not. My dad has just been great in everything that he's done, and I don't quite have that facility.
Now that you've done Little Stranger, is there any part of you that wants to do a really good, full, trashy horror movie?
Funnily enough, that's absolutely the case, yes.
I guess "trashy" is the wrong word.
I know what you mean though. A jump-scare sort of movie. I love those. I would love to be in something where the only aim is to make people scream. This is more about unease and that feeling where you know something is wrong. This is more about that feeling of being in the house at night and you hear things and you just tell yourself, "It's nothing wrong. Nothing's wrong."
It's interesting, Little Stranger. A lot of horror movies, the audience knows a bit more than the characters. But here we're just following you, we're at the mercy of your ignorance or knowledge, however you want to see it.
Totally that exactly, and that's the way the novel is as well. It's through his perspective. And I think that that is crucial to the way the story unfolds about whether he's a reliable, or unreliable, narrator. That's part of the joy of it.
That's a great trick, especially in a gothic horror movie: Make the audience think they've seen this before. Before you start to fuck with them a little bit.
Yes. "This is a period piece. This is whatever." And it's even manipulating that, you know? It's just changing that as it goes along, saying, "No, you think you know what this is, and we're just going to keep surprising you."