Award-winning theatre star Jeanne Ní Áinle has been enjoying the move from stage to screen, with upcoming roles in filmmaker David Lowery’s melodrama Mother Mary alongside Michaela Coel and Anne Hathaway, and in Netflix’s How To Get To Heaven From Belfast.
“I feel really set up by theatre and I’m excited to take up more challenging roles in screen work and more international projects,” says Dublin-born Ní Áinle, who uses the pronouns they/them, and won the best performer award at Dublin Fringe Festival in 2023 for Moonfish Theatre’s bilingual Irish/English play The Crow’s Way.
Ní Áinle caught the acting bug in their late teens when a friend suggested they try out for a drama course. “I went there for a year and it completely changed everything.”
Theatre work followed, along with roles in the BBC’s Clean Sweep and North Sea Connection, as well as several shorts, including Prelude To An Abduction, a mystery drama directed by David Turpin, Helio León’s Sister Of The Dogs, which focused on a couple’s relationship, and Postcards From Heaney Country, directed by fellow Irish Rising Star Nathan Fagan. Ní Áinle has also been seen in George Kane’s comedy sci-fi Apocalypse Clown, Paramount’s sword-and-sorcery adventure Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves and as the lead in Robert Manson’s drama Holy Island.
“What’s so nice about characters is when you can find how close they are to home. I like finding things that are similar between myself and the character, trying to tune in to their experience. I love pieces where you can riff, and people are open to adding or taking away dialogue.”
Looking to the future, Ní Áinle says: “It would be an absolute dream to be in an Andrea Arnold film. And maybe it’s a possible dream now she’s cast [the Irish actor] Barry Keoghan, so that’s one step closer.”
Ní Áinle also has writing ambitions. “My goal for the next year is to write. I have lots of stories in my head that I would love to bring to life.”
Contact: Susannah Norris
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