Domhnall Gleeson is one of the most in-demand actors out there at the moment.  The 31-year-old Dubliner, son of the great actor Brendan Gleeson, just nabbed a plum role in the upcoming Star Wars film, and he’s been working like crazy on a number of other buzzed-about projects.

Gleeson is one of the stars of Unbroken, based on Laura Hillenbrand’s book that’s owned a place on The New York Times best-selling list for years. Angelina Jolie produced and directed the project which will drop on Christmas Day, and working with such a high-profile boss was a pleasure, Gleeson said.

“I think that she is a wonderful director, a wonderful human being, I was very lucky to spend time with her and I think she’s done a great job,” Gleeson recently told The Irish Post in London. 

“I don’t think it would be a surprise to people that she’s done a great job because she’s so dedicated and so talented … my experience with her as a human and as a director was as good as it could ever have been and I’m glad to know her even a little bit.”

Though Star Wars will soon commence filming, Gleeson is currently completing work on Brooklyn with Saoirse Ronan.  The adaptation of Colm Toibin’s novel spent several weeks on location in Ireland and is now wrapping up in Montreal.

And then, of course, there’s Frank, in which Gleeson co-stars with fellow Irishman Michael Fassbender.  The film premiered at the Sundance Festival in Utah earlier this year and just opened in the U.K.; American theater-goers will get a look in August.

And Star Wars: Episode VII is bound to catapult Gleeson into the big leagues. 

"Star Wars is different to anything I've done before," Gleeson told The Guardian in the U.K. "But at the same time, the job remains the same – it has to. So the director, the script and the other actors are the reason to do it, as opposed to the history of the series. But I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the table read was one of my great moments – and not just for work reasons."