Angeline Ball makes an ensemble feel full of people who have their own ideas. We rate her musical assurance and controlled comic timing in The Commitments, while her later leading roles deserve attention beyond the breakthrough.
Fi1m perspective
In The Commitments (1991), Angeline Ball looks as keen to be heard as everyone else in the band. As backing singer Imelda Quirke, she belongs to the group without simply endorsing Jimmy Rabbitte’s enthusiasm. Alan Parker gets a pleasingly unruly ensemble out of performers whose comic timing is much tidier than their characters. The comedy needs that resistance to Jimmy; his plans would be much less funny if everyone around him existed only to applaud them. We laughed at that competition to be heard, because Ball and her fellow performers make the eagerness funny without making it feel rehearsed.
Alongside Robert Arkins as Jimmy, Andrew Strong and Maria Doyle Kennedy, she helps keep the band from becoming one eager organiser and a crowd of obliging followers. Acting and singing belong together here; neither feels like an interruption of the other. The film is warm and worth recommending, though its polish sometimes smooths away too much and some characters are given too little. Ball is a reason to watch it, but much of the pleasure comes from how she fits into the group while retaining her own comic timing.
Her subsequent film roles make it harder to treat Imelda as a complete account of what she can do. She played Tina alongside Brendan Gleeson in John Boorman’s crime drama The General (1998), then took a leading role as Molly Bloom in the James Joyce adaptation Bloom (2003). Moving from the band to crime drama and a literary lead gives her work a broader interest than the singing alone might suggest. As Molly, she is convincing in literary material, and that is a better reason to seek out Bloom than curiosity about what happened to the singer from the band. These parts are useful correctives to the familiar description of an actor who plays strong-willed Irish women.
On television, her recurring role as Gloria Meak in Shameless (2012) was followed by a lead as DS Emer Berry in Hidden Assets (2021). Her acting and singing make Imelda an understandable point of reference, but the later work is reason enough not to keep asking for the same performance. For a second evening, try Bloom.
Biography
Angeline Ball is an Irish actress and singer. Born on 28 June 1969 in Cabra, Dublin, she trained in tap, ballet and modern dance at the Billie Barry Stage School from the age of eight. She began her professional career in the early 1990s.
Her breakthrough came with the role of backing singer Imelda Quirke in Alan Parker's The Commitments (1991). Subsequent film roles include Maggie Muldovan in My Girl 2 (1994), Tina in John Boorman's The General (1998) and Mrs Gilligan in Albert Nobbs (2011). She has also appeared in television series such as Highlander: The Series (1994), The Outer Limits (1995), Shameless (2012–2013) and Casualty, as well as providing voice work for The Pebble and the Penguin (1995). Ball has worked in stage productions and released music.
