Hollywood star Chris O’Dowd talks about 'Sapphires', his role in HBO’s 'Girls' and the meaning of St. Patrick’s Day

Roscommon native Chris O'Dowd talks with Cahir O'Doherty about his newfound fame in the US and upcoming projects

Chris O’Dowd is on the line with the Irish Voice from the New York hotel room that he’s just stepped into for the first time moments ago. An hour earlier his plane touched down at JFK. It’s going to be a busy week for the Irish star best known in these parts for his breakout role in the comedy smash Bridesmaids.

First up there’s his attendance at the American Ireland Fund Young Leaders party on Thursday, where he’ll receive the Spirit of Ireland Award.  Then he will attend the U.S. premiere of his latest film, The Sapphires, the sixties girl group movie that received a 10-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival last year.

Having just arrived in New York on Monday, it seems appropriate to congratulate him on being presented with the Spirit Award. “Thank you very much.  I’m feeling very honored,” he said.

Asked what the evening will hold, Roscommon native O’Dowd admits he doesn’t know. 

“Not a clue. I presume the night will entail some kind of a dinner, and I’m hoping there will be some kind of hula dancers. In the traditional Irish way.” 

In The Sapphires, which was written, directed and stars a cast and crew of indigenous Australians, O’Dowd, 33, plays a down on his luck Irish music promoter who takes his all-girl group on a trip to stardom. In the film his being Irish is another interesting layer of an already compelling character.

“The Irish diaspora, compared to its size, still feels like un-mined territory around the world. I love playing Irish characters that just turn up in places and aren’t necessarily explained,” O’Dowd says.

“We all know that we’re everywhere.  We’re the most traveled nation of people, so it never seems incongruous to me.” 

You see Irish bars in Kuwait, O Dowd explains, and no one thinks anything of it. “My sister used to work in an Irish bar in Abu Dhabi. I think that’s a very funny sentence,” the comic admits.

O’Dowd’s character in The Sapphires was originally written as an English guy, with no real reason for it, he says. 

“When I came on board we made him Irish because it felt like they’d find connection. In that time the Aboriginal struggle was at a similar stage to the Irish struggle, and so they become friends from having a common enemy. That made sense that he was Irish, and I enjoyed that aspect of it,” says O’Dowd.

At the festival screening of the film in Cannes O’Dowd got dressed up because the legendary producer Harvey Weinstein, who bought the rights to The Sapphires, had told him that at Cannes you wear a tie.

But O’Dowd is also Irish, which means unpardonably casual, and when he heard the opening bars of “Soul Man” playing on the red carpet he did what many Irish men have done before him -- he began to dance.  

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Nster.com