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‘I knew I was in good hands’: Peaky Blinders’ Daryl McCormack on shooting sex scenes with Emma Thompson
The Irish actor might have been a sports star. Instead, he’s playing a sex worker opposite Thompson in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande and fulfilling his grandad’s movie dream
You wouldn’t think of Daryl McCormack, 29, as a chameleon of an actor. Chiselled face, green eyes, leading man material, sure, but not a shape-shifter. In the forthcoming film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, however, he looks like a guy in an advert for a £60,000 watch. In the opening shots, it’s faintly grating, like being sold the story rather than told it; as it moves on, you realise his self-assurance and slick, complicated perfection is just part of the texture and subtlety.
In Peaky Blinders, which he joined in season five, he looks, let’s just say for brevity, pretty comfortable with a gun in his hand, and in the Guardian office on a regular Tuesday morning, the Irishman looks open, unassuming and affable, as if he can’t wait to help you with something. Versatility is a constant theme, and not just in the roles he chooses: had he fulfilled his promise as a 12-year-old in Tipperary, he would have been a professional hurler. “I had a golden era in hurling,” he says, with exaggerated sincerity, “and then I didn’t hit my growth spurt the same way other young men did. That peak and then the fall … my ego at 14 was taking a hit. But I lived to tell the tale.” He fleshes this out with piquant details, as if I might not believe him. I definitely do.
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