"It's interesting going between small parts and then bigger roles where you carry the film. If the writing is good, and if the people involved have integrity, then you'll do it, even if it's only five minutes on screen"
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There is a quiet rebuke baked into Gleeson’s pragmatism: the industry’s obsession with size. The line moves like an actor’s career actually moves, not like a PR narrative. “Small parts” and “bigger roles” aren’t framed as a ladder, but as different kinds of labor. He’s stripping away the prestige economy and replacing it with a craft ethic: the job isn’t to be seen the most, it’s to belong to the story.
The conditional rhythm matters. “If the writing is good, and if the people involved have integrity” sets the real hierarchy, and it isn’t billing. Gleeson is naming what actors learn the hard way: screen time is a crude metric, because a film is a moral ecosystem. Bad writing wastes talent; bad integrity wastes time. By foregrounding “integrity,” he’s also nodding to the off-camera politics that determine whether a set is collaborative or corrosive, whether the work will feel honest or merely functional.
The kicker - “even if it’s only five minutes on screen” - reads like a defense of character actors, but it’s sharper than that. It’s a refusal of the idea that worth is proportional to visibility. Gleeson has built a reputation on precisely those five-minute turns that rewire a movie’s emotional circuitry: a priest, a father, a threat, a wounded friend. The subtext is confidence without vanity: when the material is strong and the team is decent, a small role can be the biggest choice you make.
The conditional rhythm matters. “If the writing is good, and if the people involved have integrity” sets the real hierarchy, and it isn’t billing. Gleeson is naming what actors learn the hard way: screen time is a crude metric, because a film is a moral ecosystem. Bad writing wastes talent; bad integrity wastes time. By foregrounding “integrity,” he’s also nodding to the off-camera politics that determine whether a set is collaborative or corrosive, whether the work will feel honest or merely functional.
The kicker - “even if it’s only five minutes on screen” - reads like a defense of character actors, but it’s sharper than that. It’s a refusal of the idea that worth is proportional to visibility. Gleeson has built a reputation on precisely those five-minute turns that rewire a movie’s emotional circuitry: a priest, a father, a threat, a wounded friend. The subtext is confidence without vanity: when the material is strong and the team is decent, a small role can be the biggest choice you make.
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| Topic | Movie |
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