In 2023 Hardwicke won acclaim for his performance in Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney’s drama Lakelands. Photograph: Shane O’Connorcontingent a year later. In 2023 he won acclaim for his performance in Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney’s dramaAh, yes. What did that playwright not quite say? If you hang a moustache over the fireplace in act one make sure it’s discharged by act five.
“I think it probably surprised people,” Hardwicke says. “Maybe the first step in getting any kind of emotional reaction – or a strong reaction – from audiences is to maybe present something in a way it hasn’t been presented before. So I think people watched something that was ostensibly about a crime but then became so much bigger than the cruel, horrendous actions of one man. It became a story about, in the face of all that, enduring love.
Hardwicke, as a proud son of Cork, is keen to stress that the landscape is a character in the film. The backgrounds are beautiful. But this also looks like a place where it would be easy to feel lonely. Perhaps there would be more obvious routes of escape for the oppressed protagonist in a busy city.“I remember being really taken aback by the idea that I was actually talking to a director about doing a film in west Cork,” he says. “That’s not something I ever thought I’d get to do.
Hardwicke reminds me of conversations we had a few years ago about his role in Normal People. In that all-conquering adaptation of’s second novel, he played a young man who, though life and soul of the party at school, stumbles in the outer world and ends up taking his own life. Both The Sparrow and Normal People have things to say about the consequences of mishandling psychological trauma.
It is, astonishingly, 15 years since Hardwicke first turned up on screen. Back in 2009 he had a juvenile role inproved an inspiring and formative experience. He continued to mess about in youth theatre throughout secondary school. That appearance in Vivarium, an unsettling horror film, made good – if uncharacteristic – use of his long frame as the sinister son of Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg. Since then he has solidified his reputation as a warm actor with an empathetic instinct.