Already with credits in The Deceived and Normal People, actor Ciara Berkeley’s new project—Swing Bout—sees her star as Tony Gale; a young boxer plunged into a tumultuous journey from the dressing room to her ring walk in a night of deceit, betrayal and life-altering decisions.
The last thing I saw and loved… now I did see this a while ago but I saw Strategic Love Play at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe and it was absolutely captivating. Incredibly brutal writing. All killer no filler, and the performances were so understated and sophisticated.
The book I keep coming back to… Flights by Olga Tokarczuck. It’s full of so many snippets and short stories, all delicately related to the concept of humans in transit. I love sitting in an airport terminal reading this and getting all introspective.
I find inspiration in… simply talking to other actors. I find the pursuit of acting to be a very personal and atomistic endeavour, and sometimes very lonely. It’s great to share thoughts and experiences with other actors to bring you back down to earth, and there’s always something new to learn about the craft from other people.
My favourite film is… Before Sunset – it is so mesmerising and heart-wrenching and great.
My career highlight is… definitely getting to work on Swing Bout. I always knew I wanted to be an actor from a super young age, but I didn’t always know why. This job made me understand this passion that I have – what it feels like to have that passion actually materialise into work and a day-to-day practice. There’d be moments whilst working on that shoot where we’d have just finished a scene or would be messing about and laughing during a break and I’d think to myself, “Oh, this is why I love acting. I need to be doing this all the time”.
The song I listen to to get in the zone is… “Beat Connection” by LCD Soundsystem.
The last book I recommended is… The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi. Everyone should read it.
I never leave the house without… headphones!
The performance I still think about is… pretty much any Shiv and Tom scene from Succession. I am always thinking about Succession.
My dream role would be… anything where a bond between two characters is absolutely crucial to the work. Something like Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage (1973) or Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, where two actors’ chemistry and connection carry the story, and grip audiences in its minutiae and discrepancies.
The best advice I’ve ever gotten… I was told by a good friend of mine during an existential chat at a wedding that, despite what people say, life is long. There’s no pressure to achieve everything we think we want in our early twenties or mid-twenties. There’s so much fun to be had and so many things to try, and so much time to do it all.
The art that means the most to me is… Revolt. She Said, Revolt. Again. I got to perform in a version of this that my friend Dom directed during our time at college. Working on this play really opened up the realm of possibilities in acting for me, and broadened the scope of what I thought could be achieved through writing and direction and other great castmates. I look back on it very fondly and treasure that experience.
My favourite moment in Swing Bout is… I adore Chrissie’s scene where she breaks down crying to her father in the bathroom. I hadn’t been able to see any of her scenes while we were shooting, and any scene we had together, we were meant to be biting the heads off each other. Chrissie has an incredible tenderness and subtlety that countered and complimented the tone of the rest of the film – it’s such a vital scene in that way and really, really beautiful.
The most challenging thing about being a woman in film is… I’ve certainly experienced discrimination through micro-aggressions in my career so far, but I think the term “woman in film” is too reductive. Being an “anything in film” is probably too reductive. You’re meeting so many big personalities in this industry, all so passionate and headstrong but with varying degrees of sociability and likeability – it seems like a miracle that you can find a team with which you can work well and have fun. Any team I’ve worked with where I’ve felt significantly empowered and emboldened wasn’t down to the fact that these people were feminists or politically progressive, but because they were amazing, good people.
After I wrap on a project, I… cry! For some time. I’m such a sucker for those post-shoot blues.
If I wasn’t an actor, I would be… an English teacher. I just remember being in love with every English teacher I had at school so I probably would have followed suit.
The magic of film to me is… the power of the gaze. The mechanisms filmmakers can use to expose an audience to or exclude them from an event or emotion are so impressive to me. With theatre, you can see it all on the stage, and perhaps catch some snippets from offstage, but with film, the perspective is far more precise and unfairly biased: you see exactly what the storyteller wants you to see, and I love surrendering to that.
Swing Bout will be released in select Irish cinemas on September 20. Watch the trailer below.
Imagery courtesy of Ciara Berkeley.
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