At age fourteen I joined The National Performing Arts School. By sixteen years of age I was cast in a leading role their big musical show ‘The Secret Life Of Seymour Stephens’ at The Olympia Theatre. I played the villain – a school teacher who tormented Seymour and in his nightmares I would appear as The Wicked Witch of the East from The Wizard Of Oz and Miss Hannigan from Annie. It was great fun and I learnt lot. I couldn’t get enough of theatre so I joined a Shakespearean Theatre Company in Clondalkin and performed Lady Macbeth around this time too. Jerry Royal who ran Ballyfermot Theatre Workshops saw how passionate I was about the stage and provided me with numerous opportunities to flex my acting muscles and make some pocket money along the way. I was also working as a karaoke guest singer and entering and winning big money talent contests all over Dublin at the time. I would regularly appear at the Lower Deck pub in Portobello and it was there I met Frank Allen who ran a theatre company called Tobarnarun. He was looking to cast an eighteen year old in one of his plays called Cafe Slices. This was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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Maureen Hughes cast me in my first feature films ‘Crushproof’ and ‘Accelerator’ and when I was twenty years old she was casting a new Marina Carr play called 'On Raftery’s Hill' with Druid Theatre Company and The Royal Court in London. It was big deal as we were travelling to Washington and London as well as performing in the Gate Theatre in Dublin so there were quite a few callbacks, and in the end I won the role of Sorrell. It was my first proper professional theatre gig. I thought I had a good grasp on theatre at that point, it turned out that this was only the beginning of my journey and I had a lot to learn. We toured for about four months and it was a rollercoaster ride, one I’ll never forget.

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