The performance that made Kerry Condon want to be an actor: “It makes me want to cry”
If you are unfamiliar with the name Kerry Condon, chances are you’ll at least recognise her face. She’s collaborated with Martin McDonagh on two separate occasions: once in his captivating justice drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and once in The Banshees of Inisherin, a role that garnered her an Oscar nomination. She’s also starred in two of the Irishman’s plays.
Alongside working for her fellow countryman, Condon has appeared in a number of other major productions. She recently appeared in the Brad Pitt-fronted corporate shill-a-thon F1, playing the technical director of the team at the centre of the story. Eagle-eared fans will know her as the voice of Friday, Tony Stark’s AI assistant in the latter Marvel movies. She’s never been onscreen for any of those films, but she got to take home Marvel money without ever having to leave the voice booth. Now that’s intelligent.
It wasn’t always on the cards that Condon would become an actor at all, let alone a successful and famous one. Growing up in Ireland, her parents were horse breeders, and there was every chance she would follow them into the family business. It wasn’t until she landed a small role in Angela’s Ashes that she started to realise her potential. Nevertheless, before she’d ever appeared in front of the camera, one film in particular helped her realise she was destined for the screen.
Speaking to The Academy, the Better Call Saul star spoke about the five films that had the biggest impact on her career. Right away, she opted for the 1991 coming-of-age movie Dogfight. “The reason it had such a big impact on me, particularly as an actress, is because Lili Taylor’s character in that movie is supposed to be an ugly girl,” she explained. She elaborated on the plot of the film, in which an 18-year-old Marine, played by River Phoenix, searches for an ‘ugly girl’ to bring to a party as a joke. He encounters Taylor’s Rose, and she completely changes his worldview.
“There’s a scene where Lili Taylor, she can’t believe that he’s asking her out on a date,” Condon continues. “When she’s getting ready, she can’t pick what to wear, and then she over-dresses. And when she comes down the stairs… Oh my God, when I think about it, still to this day, it makes me want to cry. She comes down the stairs, and she thinks she looks pretty, but she actually doesn’t… But Lili Taylor was so moving and so brilliant that it made me go, ‘I don’t want to be the actress that is just trying to look attractive. I want to be a person who’s evoking feelings. That way, it would resonate with lots of women’.”
The movie wasn’t much of a hit, but it has had its own impact on culture. It spawned a stage musical in 2012 and served as an early platform to a young Brendan Fraser, who plays an unnamed sailor.
It might not have had the widest reach, but Dogfight meant the world to a young Kerry Condon. Without it, she might have never taken the leap to begin her own acting journey. Thank God for River Phoenix and his character being a complete knob.
