Pub GuideIrish actor Chris O'Dowd's life in the fast lane
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If you’re standing on a Hollywood film set playing opposite Jack Black, you might be tempted to conclude you’ve made it as an actor. But not Chris O’Dowd. The 29-year-old from Boyle, Co. Roscommon has an Irishman’s caution about counting his chickens.
“I’ve seen so many actors on top of the world fall off a week or two later,” he tells the Irish Voice. “It’s a practical thing. I think you’re only as good as your next project so I won’t be patting myself on the back just yet, you know?”
But he has every right to be pleased with himself, nonetheless. O’Dowd recently won the role of Edward Edwardian, the English-sounding military leader of the Lilliputians in the film version of Gulliver’s Travels.
The film, a knock-about comedy on an epic scale, is currently being shot in London. O’Dowd plays Black’s main rival and arch nemesis. In a bit of casting that Jonathan Swift might have appreciated, it’s the Irishman who’s the villain of the piece.
“In Gulliver’s Travels I play the military commander of the Lilliputians (the nation of six inch people that Gulliver towers over). He’s a comedy baddy engaged to a princess (played by Emily Blunt) and he tries to kill Gulliver (played by Black). A lot of mayhem ensues.”
O’Dowd admits he’s completely wowed by the epic scale of the big-budget Hollywood film.
“It’s a very big set and it’s filled with a very fun group of people. But there’s also a lot of freedom in it creatively and I’m having huge fun making it. Being this sort of posh prancing English style of commander barking orders and running around is about as much fun as you’d imagine,” he says.
Part of O’Dowd’s appeal is his unlikely sex symbol status. Although there’s no doubt that O’Dowd is very good looking, he’s still very approachable, and not at all the kind of humorless alpha male Irish actor type more commonly plastered all over a Hugo Boss commercial, say. There’s even an online group now, the O’Dowdles, who spend all their free time enumerating his charms.
Asked if he thinks he’ll become the next Colin Farrell or Jonathan Rhys Meyers he sighs and says, “I will need sharper cheekbones.”
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