From The Commitments to EastEnders and now Shameless, Angeline Ball has enjoyed a quietly successful acting career. Alan Corr talks to her about her latest role as feisty hairdresser Gloria Meak in Channel 4’s comedy drama
You could say Angeline Ball started at the bottom. When she clambered over that garden wall in The Commitments, Alan Parker’s celebrated film about the Dublin band with soul, it caused pandemonium among her future bandmates and inspired the best line in the movie. Since those small beginnings, the Dubliner has enjoyed an impressive career on television, film and stage.
Three weeks ago, she added another entry to a long list of eye-catching roles as straight-talking hairdresser Gloria Meak in Channel 4’s hit comedy drama Shameless, which is set on a northern housing estate. “It’s very cold up here in Manchester, kind of icy so I’m glad to have a little break and get into the warm”, Ball says in that beguilingly husky voice down the phone when I call her. “It’s just bitter out even when we’re shooting indoors you can see our breath!”
So she’s suffering for her art again. Gloria Meak is somewhat of a departure for Ball; she’s feisty for sure and soon becomes a bedrock of the Chatsworth Estate, and the actress is glad to be able to get her teeth into the role. “I’m more robust and bustier, gloriously Gloria in every way! I don’t think I’ve ever done anything as daring as Shameless”, she says. “I’ve been across the board over the years but there’s just something about this show. It’s got its own kind of style and niche and it’s something I haven’t done before. It’s been a huge learning curve for me.
“I’m trying to add another string to my bow to be honest and it was a bit of a challenge to me when it first came up. Do I want to play it? And can I play it? Gloria’s a bit of a shoulder to cry on for women who are giving out about their husbands or whatever so she’s a good listener and she can keep secrets too. She’s quite feisty, she’s self-made and she’s got a nice little house and her little business. She’s quite self sufficient.”
42-year-old Ball has enjoyed a diverse number of roles since the fateful day she climbed over that garden wall in The Commitments. She played Nora in Bloom and “a composite of every blonde imaginable” in RTÉ drama Any Time Now, two roles which made won her Best Actress gongs in both the film and TV categories at the 2003 IFTAs. Before that she starred in The General with her old Commitments’ friend Maria Doyle Kennedy and she’s also ranged from the gritty realism of Our Friends in The North to the genteel drama of Doc Martin.
She got her first taste of Hollywood with a role in My Girl 2. Did she like it over there? “I think I was very young, I was a very young 22-year-old”, she says. “I was a bit lonely to be honest with you. I hadn’t got my family there. I enjoyed the work but I didn’t like being over there on my own and that’s one of the reasons I came back. I’m a very family-orientated kind of woman and I wasn’t that ambitious or that hungry that I would leave myself without my family or friends around me, I just couldn’t do it.”
Her experiences making the ill-fated Divine Rapture with Marlon Brando in Cork in 1995 were altogether different. The movie famously collapsed just two weeks into filming but Ball has fond memories of her sojourn in Ballycotton. “That was wonderful and had it worked it would have been amazing but it’s one of those fish that got away”, she says. “We did a documentary on it recently and it’s one of those films which will always be talked about and what if . . . ? Who knows? If it was ever released it might have been a complete box-office flop, but it’s kind of a bit mystical and it’s up there in the ether of the what ifs? of cinema. It’s kind of infamous for that now.”
Ball grew up in Dublin’s Cabra area and when I ask her if that’s the ‘posh’ end, she says: “What is posh Cabra? Oh, the old part of Cabra. I’m not from the posh end of Cabra, I’m from the common end.” But not quite the sink estate where Shameless is set then? “No, no. The thing about Cabra is that even in the common end there are little posh bits. I had a lovely childhood and my parents were wonderful and they brought us up to respect people. Education was a major thing and I think as a result of that my sisters and I have done well from life, so certainly I think it’s a state of mind – it doesn’t matter where you’re born or where you’re brought up – it’s your attitude toward life and how you approach it really.”
Ball has no hesitation in saying music is her first love. Her co-stars on The Commitments have had varying levels of success in music, from the Oscar-winning Glen Hansard to Maria Doyle Kennedy, who has released several sublime albums. Ball is eager to resurrect her own singing career; she describes her style as similar to Adele, Melody Gardot and Norah Jones.
“I am working on an album, yes. I’m six songs in and I really need to get my skates on”, she says. “As you can imagine, I’m a mother of two and I’m working on Shameless in Manchester but I live in London, so there’s a lot of travelling involved and there’s a lot of time on my own in the evenings in the hotel. That’s where I got the incentive to write songs but I’m hoping that by the end of this year I’ll have something out there.”
Working in Manchester also means that she’s away from her kids, Katie (8) and Maxime (2) and her partner, Frenchman and designer Patrice Gueroult quite a lot. “I get to see them as often as possible”, she says. “If I have a day off I go back down. The thing about Shameless is that you’re not in from Monday to Friday; sometimes you are, if not you’re back at home. I’ve had weeks at home recently.
"People think I’m crazy but when I finish here and I have day off I go back down to London and then I come up the next night. I do a lot of travelling. I do have a mother’s guilt but I’d probably feel that way if I was only going to work around the corner. My kids are my first and foremost but it’s also good to work, good for me spiritually, emotionally and financially for my children.”
Her commitment to The Commitments remains strong too. Last year, the band reformed for their 20th anniversary and played Dublin’s O2 and this year they’ll be back together again to play Glasgow and Liverpool, leading up to London’s O2 on St Patrick’s Day. “I’m delighted to be doing it. I have such fun on stage with the whole gang”, she says. “It was just the right thing to do and I think it’s brilliant and I love it. We don’t want to flog it to death but it doesn’t feel like work when you get up on stage at all.”
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all has been talking about The Commitments for over 20 years but she’s refreshingly willing to discuss the movie that launched her career, unlike other actors who often become prickly when their breakthrough role is mentioned. However, she is adamant that a sequel to The Commitments would not be the right thing to do. “I personally don’t think there should be another movie. It stands on its own and still stands to this day. Yes, it has aged, but it’s a universal story and I think it’s a brilliant story that still holds its own.
"To leave that kind of story dangling at the end is perfect. To go back and revisit it and rehash it would just be wrong. I wouldn’t want to do it. The way it ended was beautiful and poetic and lovely. It keeps people always wanting more and that’s the way it should be, you can’t go back and do a two, a three and a four. No way.”
Shameless will keep her busy until April, she’s got those Commitments gigs, there’s that album to finish, and hopefully a bit more theatre in Dublin, but ask Angeline Ball whether she’d prefer a Golden Globe or a Grammy at home on her Hackney mantelpiece and there’s no hesitation.
“Grammy Award. We were up for a Grammy with The Commitments and we got to perform at the ceremony, which was amazing”, she says. “I think music is far more personal than acting, especially if you write something from the heart and it’s about your life and you’re able to express it through music. The best accolade would to be acknowledged for that.”
Shameless, Channel 4, Tuesday nights
