anna hardwick
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As Eanna Hardwick would be the first to admit, he had a lot of luck.
A few serendipitous moments led to the 27-year-old Irish native being included in the 2024 European Shooting Film Festival, a select group of 10 up-and-coming actors to be honored at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival. He was selected by the Stars and will benefit from four divisions. – His one-day program of networking and professional exchange events with international agents and producers (from February 16th to his 19th).
Hardwick was only 13 and doing youth theater in Cork when he co-starred with Ciaran Hinds and Aidan Quinn in Conor MacPherson’s Irish horror film Eclipse.
“I thought it was a success,” he says with a laugh. “At 13, I thought I was going to go professional. Then…nothing. So I ended up going to drama school.”
Then, a week before graduating from the Rhyl Drama School in Dublin, Hardwick appeared in Lorcan Finnegan’s arthouse sci-fi feature Vivarium, playing the son of Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots. They played a young couple who got caught up. A mysterious maze-like area where similar houses are lined up in the suburbs.
“Again, I was very lucky,” Hardwick says. “I never imagined that my first job out of drama school would be this great sci-fi thriller/Twilight Zone-esque production that we shot over the summer in Belgium and Ireland. Although I loved watching movies, This was a great entry point into film, as I wasn’t particularly aware of how films were made. And in my first job, I worked with a brilliant director who had a very strong vision. I ended up working. It was like getting a whole new education all summer long.”
After leaving Vivarium, Hardwick appeared in the BBC miniseries Normal People, which featured two then-unknown actors. Paul Mescal before “Aftersun,” before “All of Us Strangers,” and Daisy Edgar-Jones before “Where the Crawdads Sing.” It was released on Hulu in the US and was nominated for four Emmy Awards.
Just over a year later, Hardwick starred in Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney’s Irish drama Lakelands as Sian, a professional athlete who suffers potentially career-ending injuries when he is attacked during a night out. This will be his first leading role. Hardwick won the role.
“It was just a potluck,” he says. “I felt a great kinship with Sian because we have a lot in common. Being from my generation in Ireland and Ireland being a small enough country, I knew Sian and I knew his voice. , I felt like I had access to it.”
Lakelands sits in a niche with last year’s Oscar nominee The Quiet Girl and the Cillian Murphy-starring drama Small Things Like These, which opened in Berlin in 2024, but these are deceptively small. It is a story that accurately observes the Irish countryside, past and present. At Lakelands, as Hardwick struggles to come to terms with his injury, he is forced to question traditional notions of masculinity. Cian becomes a stand-in for Ireland itself and a country searching for a new identity as the world around them changes.
“These are all great examples of where Irish cinema is going,” Hardwick says. “There seems to be a lot of interest in these stories. Look at Ann Kailin Siuyin [The Quiet Girl], which was a huge success at the Berlin International Film Festival two years ago and went all the way to the Oscars. ”
But Hardwick was also willing to leave the comfort of rural Ireland to embody characters far removed from his personal experiences. In the BBC’s full-on crime drama The Sixth Commandment, a young student gaslights his older teacher Peter Farquhar (Timothy Spall) to death by tricking him into thinking he is in love with her. , who plays Ben Field. In Paramount’s The Doll Factory, he plays Silas Reed, a store owner who does vivisection and taxidermy on the side.
“Both roles required a big leap forward,” Hardwick says. “I think acting is a lot more dynamic than just your personality, your background, and expressing yourself on screen. …But maybe that’s because casting directors cast me to play really scary people.” Maybe I’m just justifying my choice.”
Hardwick will next try his hand at normal acting, or as a BBC TV producer, as Stewart MacLean in The Bury Royal Scandal. Amazon’s miniseries revolves around the events surrounding Prince Andrew’s infamous 2019 interview about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which was a public relations disaster and marked the royal family’s final downfall. did. Michael Sheen plays Prince Andrew and Ruth Wilson plays his interviewee Emily Maitlis.
“It’s completely different again,” Hardwick said. “Basically, I want to work with good scripts and good people, no matter where the story takes me.”
With one big exception. Hardwick says that no matter how lucky he is, he will never land a role in a musical.
“It’s a common misconception that all Irish people are in tune, but I never agree,” he says. “I know we’re in a great era of musicals, and I love musicals. But unfortunately, that’s not part of my skill set.”
