“I knew he was going to be disappointed.”
Hard as it might be to believe given his status these days – not least his role in one of the biggest TV shows of all time – but Liam Cunningham once had to rely on a regular job to supplement his acting career.
And not just any regular job, either. Back in the day, Cunningham worked as an electrician for the ESB before he decided to put his box of tools aside and focus on becoming a full-time thespian.
It was a move that Cunningham knew he had to make and it ended up paying off in quite spectacular fashion, but at the time, the decision wasn’t universally well-received.
Cunningham, as he told Dion Fanning in this week’s episode of Ireland Unfiltered, was particularly concerned about the reaction of his late father, who wasn’t exactly thrilled at his son giving up a career that had a certain security and status attached to it.
“I remember my Dad, God rest him, I was saying to my missus at the time, ‘I’ll have to tell him’,” Cunningham recalled.
“I knew he was going to be disappointed because he’d boasted, I’m sure, many times to his mates about ‘my son’s in the ESB’ and all that. I walked into my folks’ house, I couldn’t really face him so his kind of armchair was just inside the door, so I was kind of looking over his shoulder. I was trying to muster up the courage.
“He was a big man and he knew I was doing the acting and he knew something was coming. He was reading his newspaper and I said, ‘Da, you know the acting thing, I’m gonna go… I’m jacking in the job’, I just blurted it out.
He didn’t even move his head, he was just looking at the newspaper and said the following three words – ‘For fuck’s sake’.
During the episode, Cunningham also spoke about how he’ll miss “the perfect storm” of Game of Thrones, which comes to an end this year, and revealed candidly why he feels the need to turn down some acting jobs that come his way.
You can listen to the show in full below.
Ireland Unfiltered, brought to you in partnership with Carlsberg Unfiltered, will be available everywhere you get your podcasts and on YouTube every Tuesday.
