Meet Your Star Warriors: Domhnall Gleeson

In a small number of years, Domhnall Gleeson has gone from sick-looking guy on the street to cinema's go-to actor for roles that require sick-looking guys. And now he's going to be in the new Star Wars film. Will he play a Skywalker? Will he play a rebel? Or will he play a Sick Sith? We don't know!

Most audiences probably got their first looks at Domhnall Gleeson in 2010, a big year for the actor. In those twelve months alone, Gleeson appeared in Never Let Me Go, where he did something very sad, I'm sure, True Grit, where he played a feeble and weak bandit who gets his fingers cut off, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, where he played (of all things) a Weasley, something called Sensation, and a TV movie called When Harvey Met Bob, in which he played Bob Geldof, the part he was born to play (aside from the Weasley).

And that was just one year! Since then he's popped up in the other half of that Harry Potter movie, played a sad sickly guy in Dredd, put on fancy clothes for Anna Kareninaeninna, starred in his very own romantic comedy (About Time), and appeared in indie darling Frank. And now Star Wars? This guy is on fire! Hence the red hair.

Looking at the big Star Wars cast read-through photo, Gleeson is actually in the foreground with his back to us. He sits not on an IKEA sofa, but a single lonely chair, flanked by producer Kathleen Kennedy and Anthony Daniels.

This tells us many things. One, no one in that room respects him. Otherwise we'd be able to see his face and he probably wouldn't be alone like that. We can also intuit that his role puts him apart from others. Or he's producing the film. One or the other.

It's tricky with Domhnall Gleeson because he could probably do anything Star Wars needs. He has the innocence to play a classic hero, the sickly sorrow of a villain, and otherworldliness of an alien, and the twerpy nerdiness of a droid. Plus, if they decide they need to cast Tilda Swinton late in production he probably has that covered as well. He is very versatile.

In any case, Gleeson marks an interesting addition to an already interesting cast. Unless he's the producer, in which case I'm sure he'll make a mark in that capacity as well.