Brendan Gleeson Braveheart (1995)
Brendan Gleeson was thirty-nine when he shot Braveheart and four years into his film career after a long second act as a Dublin schoolteacher. He had been teaching English and Irish at Belcamp College in Dublin into his mid-thirties, doing local theater on the side, and had broken into film only with The Field (1990) and Far and Away (1992). Hamish Campbell — Wallace's lifelong friend, the stone-thrower in beat 9,b9 the man who carries Wallace from the field at Falkirkb32 — was the role that began Gleeson's international career.
A teacher who became an actor at thirty-four
Gleeson was born in Dublin in 1955 and trained as a secondary-school teacher; he taught at Belcamp College for years while doing amateur theater with the Passion Machine company. He turned professional in 1989 at age thirty-four, told in subsequent interviews that he had taken the leap because his wife told him to and because his teaching colleagues pooled their savings to support the family during the first two years.
"I was thirty-four with three kids and a teaching pension I was about to walk away from. Mary said: do it. The teachers I worked with said: do it, we'll cover you. I would not have had a career without the people of Belcamp College." — Brendan Gleeson, The Irish Times (2017, archived)
His first significant film role was in Jim Sheridan's The Field (1990), opposite Richard Harris. Far and Away (1992) followed; Into the West (1992); a small part in Michael Collins (1996). Braveheart, shot in the summer of 1994 and released in May 1995, was his first major international credit.
The stone-thrower
Hamish is structurally the audience's surrogate — he meets Wallace at the wedding feast in beat 9 and challenges him to throw rocks, and his line about the test of a soldier ("the test of a soldier is not in his arm — it's here," tapping his head) reframes Malcolm's "wits make a man" inheritance at the level of a village joke.b9 b5 The rest of the film returns to Hamish at every structural turn: he is the one who tries to send the messenger to find Wallace at Falkirk; he carries Wallace from the field after the visor-lift;b32 he is the one who confronts Wallace on the morning of the noble-brokered trap with the only direct challenge to Wallace's chosen approach in the film.b36
"You're doing it for her. To be a hero, 'cause you think she sees you." — beat 36
Gleeson has said in interviews that the morning-of-the-trap scene was the one he asked Gibson to reshoot. The first take had Hamish saying the line in anger; the second, the take that is in the film, he says it in grief. The film's structure depends on the difference.
After Braveheart
Gleeson's career after Braveheart runs to almost ninety film and television credits in the years since. The signature roles are In Bruges (2008) for Martin McDonagh, The Guard (2011) and Calvary (2014) for John Michael McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) — for which he received an Oscar nomination — and his recurring role as Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potter films from 2005 onward. His son Domhnall Gleeson became an actor in the 2010s; the two have appeared together in Calvary and several short films.
"Gleeson is a director's actor. You can put him in any frame, ask him to do almost anything, and he will do it without a fuss and without making it about him. The performances are not flashy and they last forever." — Martin McDonagh, The Hollywood Reporter (2022, archived)
The career arc — Dublin schoolteacher to Best Picture co-star to Oscar nominee — is the one Gleeson talks about least and the one that interviewers most often want to ask about.