Gary Hollywood: interview

Mrs Brown's Boys star Gary Hollywood: My agent told me NOT to do the show
The Scot says being in the hit show has changed his life, but admits that, despite the sitcom attracting millions of fans, the critics hate it and his former agent told him not take the role.

Gary and Brendan in TV show

It's the show millions of telly viewers love – and the critics love to hate.
But for Gary Hollywood, Mrs Brown’s Boys has given him a role that changed his life.
The popular Scot had just seen a theatre job fall through when he took a role in a panto alongside jobbing actor Brendan O’Carroll.
Gary struck up a firm friendship with Brendan, who was just starting to write a show for theatre starring Agnes Brown.
Twelve years, 11million viewers and five major TV awards – including a Bafta last year– later, the pair have conquered the showbiz world with a project many critics insisted would never work.
The success of Mrs Brown’s Boys has taken it from stage to small screen and now to LA.
With a Universal Studios movie and a cartoon series on the way, their bid for world domination – the show is also a hit in Australia, Canada and Iceland – is nearly complete.
Gary first appeared in the stage show in 2001 but even his then agent wasn’t convinced.
The 33-year-old actor said: “It’s true. My agent said I should be concentrating on film roles, not touring theatres with Mrs Brown.
“Needless to say, not long after she uttered those words, that particular lady was no longer my agent.”
She was not the only critic who has failed to understand the massive popularity of the foul-mouthed Irish matriarch and her boys.
Gary said: “It’s hard to believe now, given the global success of the show.
“But along the way, we’ve been continually panned by critics who hated poor old Agnes.
“In the early days, we’d get upset about what the critics said.
“But Brendan sat us down and told us, ‘Listen, it’s not the feckin’ critics who pay your wages, it’s the audience.’ Our overnight success  has taken 13 years of hard graft, touring theatres across the country, doing two shows a day, away from home for months at a time.

Gary, Fiona Gibney and Brendan at the Baftas

 “On paper, the Mrs Brown concept really shouldn’t have worked. We have a man dressed as a woman, slapstick, old-fashioned jokes and a lot of swearing. But the fans loved us.
“So many of them turn up at the stage door, we spend at least an hour signing autographs after every show.”
Fate brought Gary love – meeting his wife Sharon, 40 – and the biggest break of his career all on the same day.
Gary said: “The luckiest day of my life very nearly didn’t happen.
“Another theatre job fell through so I said yes to panto at Glasgow’s Pavilion Theatre in 2000.
“I played Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island and the dame, Mrs Birdseye, was being played by Brendan.
“Sharon was at a loose end for a few weeks while touring in the Andrew Lloyd Webber show Starlight Express so she pitched up as one of the panto dancers and we immediately fell in love.
“By the end of the show, I’d got myself a wife, a life-long friend and mentor and the best job I’ve ever had.”

Gary with his wife Sharon and their sons Jack and Charlie

David McNie

Gary didn’t hesitate when Brendan asked him to join Mrs Brown’s Boys as Dino Doyle, the hairdresser boyfriend of Agnes’s gay son Rory.
With several Mrs Brown books based around his own Dublin childhood already under his belt, Brendan’s fearsome character was a theatre natural.
By the time television producer Stephen McCrum bought a ticket for the show at the Pavilion four years ago, Mrs Brown’s Boys already had millions of fans.
McCrum got it commissioned and now it is one of the BBC’s biggest ratings successes.
The show has sold out at the 6000-seater O2 Arena in London later this year, with tour dates for Canada, America and New Zealand lined up.
Brendan is writing the movie, which will be shot in Dublin and Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire later this year, and a fourth TV series is expected after 2014.
For Gary, the show is the pinnacle of an acting career which has seen him rewarded for decades of hard graft since starting as a kid. At the age of 12, Gary was plucked from Bellarmine School in Pollok, Glasgow, to play a role in Taggart with Mark McManus and James Macpherson.
By 14, he was on Scotland’s biggest soap, High Road, playing glue-sniffing teenager Dominic Ramsay.
Now Mrs Brown has boosted his career into red-carpet territory, and he has become a regular on the awards circuit, hobnobbing with stars such as Peter Kay, Hugh Bonneville and Keith Lemon as well as the X Factor judges.
Gary said: “It’s weird going on the red carpet, hearing people screaming your name.
“I’m still taken aback when stars such as Keith Lemon come up and want their picture taken with me.
“When we won our first Bafta, we were surrounded by the biggest stars cheering us on.
“It took several seconds for it to sink in that we had actually won.
“We all rushed on to the stage and the place went wild.
“But, thanks to my mum, my feet stay firmly on the ground.
“She’s still got an application form for me to collect Tesco trollies if it all goes horribly wrong. That’s mums for you.”

Source (including photos): Daily Record