Aidan Quinn loved the Irish weather and home cooking making 'A Shine Of Rainbows'

By: ANTOINETTE KELLY | Published Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 8:37 AM | Updated Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 8:49 AM

Who says it always rains in Ireland? Whilst filing his latest flick Irish American film star Aidan Quinn didn't see a drop fall.

"It did not rain one day while I was there," the blue-eyed leading man told the Toronto International Film Festival, where his latest film 'A Shine Of Rainbows' screened.

"It didn't rain at all. It was the sunniest May and June that they'd had in years, and other parts of Ireland were getting soaked. But this northern county, way up there by Scotland, had the most magnificent weather."

Quinn revelled in the Mediterranean like warm spell in the Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal, golfing 18 holes every day after 10 hours of filming and then hitting the local pub.

"You'd order a big clam chowder, and you'd have a couple of brown soda breads, homemade, with slabs of butter on it, two pints of Guinness," Quinn said with a loud clap of his hands.

"You're out like a light at 12 o'clock and sleep like the sheeted dead, I mean, sleep like the sleep of a baby. And we would do that three, four times a week. It was fantastic."

"A Shine of Rainbows' is described as a touching tale about a spindly, redheaded eight-year-old orphan (Scottish newcomer John Bell) who is adopted by a couple from an island off the coast of Ireland.

Danish actress Connie Nielsen plays the boy's adoptive mother and Quinn plays his gruff, taciturn father, who is turned off by the boy's frailty.

The new film is based on the book by Lillian Beckwith and is a Canadian-Irish co-production.