Gillen's Gall - Brief Article

Interview, April, 2000 by Jessica Winter

Britain's Channel Four series Queer as Folk kicked up a row on the other side of the pond last year with its sexually explicit, sailor-tongued, and--almost as startling--virtually apolitical take on Manchester gay life. Grinning impishly at the center of the controversy was Aidan Gillen's Stuart, a reckless heartbreaker who's hosted more one-night stands than your average motor lodge. "I never would have done the part if I hadn't known the show was going to be really good, because there was just so much exposure involved, both in terms of physical exposure and numbers of people watching," says the 31-year-old Irishman.

Queer as Folk has gone mostly unseen in the States--we're only ready for certain modes of sex in the city, it seems. But you can glimpse Gillen in this month's psychodrama Buddy Boy, where he manages to model his birthday suit again while still pulling off a disappearing act, vanishing into the role of a stuttering, put-upon, possibly deranged, all-around good Catholic boy. "I like the characters I play to be as different as possible," Gillen says. "I don't want to be easily recognizable as one thing or another." His days of going incognito offscreen. though, may be past.