Colm Meaney

In The Snapper (1993), Colm Meaney lets Dessie Curley be irritated by his family and fond of them at the same time. The comedy depends on the difficulty of managing both feelings, and Meaney never makes that difficulty look foolish. We laughed at his exasperation, then felt protective of him because the effort of being this father was so apparent. The film is generous towards him, sometimes too generous, but the warmth of the performance is earned.

His film work includes all three Roddy Doyle adaptations between 1991 and 1996, starting with The Commitments (1991). On television, he became a series regular as Miles O'Brien in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999), while taking supporting parts in American films. These parts draw on his ability to make an ordinary man worth watching without insisting that he is exceptional. We prefer the family parts, where being dependable does not settle the matter.

Stephen Frears gets that balance right in The Snapper, allowing distress to remain part of the comedy. Doyle's writing gives the family reasons to engage with one another, and Tina Kellegher's Sharon and Ruth McCabe's Kay keep concerns of their own. Meaney's attention to them matters as much as his prominence. Our reservation is with how readily the film understands Dessie while looking less closely at what it asks of its women. We can sympathise with Dessie and still wish the film would question him more.

Layer Cake (2004), with Meaney as Gene, offers the less comforting version of that authority: quiet, credible menace. Such parts suit him, though repeated casting as fathers and authority figures risks making him seem more predictable than he is. There is enough difficulty beneath Dessie's irritation to suggest that merely asking Meaney to supply a blunt answer wastes something. We would start with The Snapper, rather than wait for another role that only needs someone to look in charge.