Barry Ward a Dublin-born actor

i've been in london for four years. I live in the East End, in Hackney. I love it. It's a great area, really cool. There's a lot going on there. Culturally it's very rich.

in the play, I'm Azor. He's one of four orphans who are taken at birth in order to settle a dispute that arose in the previous generation. Basically, the four orphans are raised in isolation and when they reach sexual maturity, they're unleashed upon each other to see who is the most faithful sex, male or female.

it's a great premise. It's quite like an extreme reality TV show. Someone told me recently that this did go on in Victorian times among the affluent and they could afford to do these kind of things, and of course empiricism was taking off as well. Very, very weird.

we started shooting Family on my 14th birthday, so that's over half my lifetime ago. That was my first job. They were open auditions and BBC casting agents toured schools of Ireland recruiting young males to audition for the part. I had no interest in acting up until then.

i was about 20 when I decided to go into acting full time. I did a shoot with Cillian Murphy and Paloma Baeza in the US, on Long Island, in Sunburn and they convinced me it was the right thing to do. It was such a good experience that I thought, mistakenly, that all jobs would be like this.

acting is a case of work breeding work. I'm no stranger to hard times but I guess when it's good you've got to make the most of it and enjoy it as much as possible.

when times were tough I did plenty of odd jobs, like furniture removal. I managed a bookstore in London for a while. Last year I started teaching study skills to British A-level students.

i'm a big fan of Cillian [Murphy]. Keith McErlean is a friend of mine and he's a good actor. Nick Lee is a friend too, and I'm very impressed with his work. I'm going to get into trouble now for leaving out some good buddies of mine.

everyone involved in acting in Ireland knows everyone or there's only one degree of separation. There are lots of very talented actors and they're all scrapping for a limited number of parts.

what i'd like to do next is make a little independent movie. That would be nice. But it's totally out of your hands, really. You do the auditions and, depending on what offers come in, you make your decision. I think the whole notion of actors choosing their own career path is very much a delusion. You take what's given and it steers you rather than you steering it.