Aidan Quinn praises brief role in West Cork‑set film “The Body is Water”

Aidan Quinn says his three‑minute turn in Vicky Waldron Wight’s new film The Body is Water could earn him an Oscar, noting that “brevity is no barrier to achieving Hollywood’s highest honour”.

The drama follows grieving Texas father David (Isiah Whitlock Jr) who relocates to a remote West Cork village, where he encounters the taciturn resident John Umley, played by Quinn. Umley appears at a poetry night in the local pub, reciting Eavan Boland’s “And Soul” while nursing a half‑drunk pint of stout.

Quinn told the Irish Examiner via Zoom from a US hotel that he did little preparation for the scene, relying on the writer’s “homework” and the power of Boland’s poem to guide his performance. He described his initial puzzlement at the script, which vanished once he read the poem, saying it “slayed me”.

Drawing on his own background, Quinn imagined Umley as a “young man from Dublin” who has lived in West Cork for decades. He reflected on his own peripatetic upbringing, moving between Chicago, Canada and Ireland, and recalled his early years wandering Dublin, reading Yeats and Joyce.

Quinn also mentioned recent work acquiring the rights to Sam Shepard’s play Ages of the Moon, which he is co‑producing and directing with Steve Buscemi.

Source: Irish Examiner. Photo: Anna Lupa / Pexels.