Interview with Irish actor Ciaran Hinds - star of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with Scarlett Johansson

Cahir O'Doherty chats with Ciaran Hinds

Onstage, Hinds’s scenes with Walker, 30, the actor who plays his son (and who is engaged to Meryl Streep’s daughter, actress Mamie Gummer) are electrifying, providing the emotional center of the play. Irish audiences will be particularly surprised to see how strong Walker resembles Hinds’s closest friend Liam Neeson.

“You wouldn’t be the fourth, fifth or eighth person to say that!” Hinds laughs.

“My English agent came to see me in my dressing room yesterday and he said, ‘God, Ben Walker is very like Liam Neeson.’ I replied, ‘Yeah, well I wasn’t going to have f***ing Liam as my son, was I?’  But I noticed the resemblance myself and mentioned it to my daughter.”

Hinds and his family spend every Christmas with the Neesons. When Hinds’ daughter Aoife saw Walker she blurted, “He looks like young Liam.” 

Hinds discreetly told her not to mention it to Neeson as it might make him feel old.

“Then, after all this, I asked Liam if he knew Ben Walker. Before I said anything more he said, ‘He played the young me in the film Kinsey.’ That sort of seals the deal on that way.”

Hinds knows a lot of the people will be coming to the theater see Scarlett Johansson. 

“She’s so good and so on the money in her role,” he says, supportively. “She’s plays a real breathing hurt southern lady.” 

But clued in audiences will also come to see an iconic play by Williams and what Hinds makes of it. 

“We’ve been hearing back from people who came to see a play they thought they knew, but the evening was full of revelations they didn’t anticipate as they watched it,” he says.

“That’s what Rob was aiming for. He knew Williams’s work inside out. He let us follow our instincts.”

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Nster.com