Knowing when to move on is another important factor in the longevity of Gillen’s career. “One of the reasons I left London after Queer as Folk was because I wasn’t that comfortable with the attention or being called by a character name on the street,” he reflects. “Now I quite like it, and I’d rather be called by a character name than my real name—I’d rather have that buffer in there, and it means they believe what you’ve done.” A viewer’s relatively short attention span is something he regards favorably: “The good news is that if you find another role and do okay in it, they switch to that. It went from ‘Stuart’ to ‘Tommy’ to ‘Little Finger,’ and some other ones along the way. Within a couple of years, they forget who you are, and that’s also quite comforting.”

EMMA BROWN: Did you know any of the Peaky Blinders cast members before joining the show?

AIDAN GILLEN: A few. Cillian [Murphy], I know, not especially well, but I do know him going back a few years, casually, really. Ned Dennehy, who plays Charlie Strong; Packy Lee, who plays Johnny Dogs. Charlie Murphy, who’s a really great Irish actress who’s coming in this year also, I know because we’ve worked together before on a series called Love/Hate in Ireland. That’s probably it.

BROWN: Is the Irish acting scene quite small? Do you feel like you know most established Irish actors at this point?

GILLEN: It’s a small enough scene, for sure, which is one of the reasons I went to London in 1988, to open up a little.

BROWN: I know your sister Fionnuala is an actor as well, and two of your brothers are involved in film. When you all decided to go into the arts, were your parents excited? Or were they hoping that one of you would become a doctor?

GILLEN: I’m the youngest of six kids, and I don’t think any one of us was going to be a doctor. It wasn’t that kind of thing. Me and my sister, who were the youngest, were the first to get into it and the others came in later. We started at the same time in this youth theater group in Dublin. If you’re a parent of six kids, by the time the youngest ones are in their mid-teens, you’re kind of over fighting about what they want to do. I just had encouragement, actually. I started working straight out of school, so it was never an issue.

BROWN: What was your first professional role in London?

GILLEN: It was a play called A Handful of Stars, which was at the Bush Theatre [in 1988]. It is, and was, a new writing theater—they only produce new plays. It was formed in the early ’70s, and it’s moved now, but it was a tiny theater over a pub in Shepherd’s Bush and a real hotbed of talent and discovery. I came over there in ’88, did the show, and ended up moving into the house of the artistic director, Jenny Topper, because I needed somewhere to live. I lived there for three years and I used to see everything. I continued being around there into the ’90s. There were lots of exciting things there; they were doing the first performances of plays like Killer Joe by Tracy Letts. The first London performance of Trainspotting before the film had even come out was at the Bush. It was always an exciting place to be around. I did two or three plays there by the same writer, Billy Roche.