John Lynch, the wild Irishman: "Some people stop drinking when they notice that alcohol makes them feel bad, I did the opposite"

As the good son of a Northern Irish Catholic, John Lynch (Coventry, 1961) is happy that France has eliminated England in the World Cup.

This interview takes place one day after Messi's Argentina has sealed his pass to the final.

He is passing through Madrid to promote the premiere of the second season of

(HBO), a

created by the brothers Álex and David Pastor.

The actor is worried about knowing if he will be able to see the second semifinal at the hotel where he is staying, which will be played tonight.

He will see her with his friends, but he will not taste a drop of alcohol.

He has been sober for 20 years.

He left shortly after starring in and co-writing the

of George Best, one of the best British footballers in history who also suffered from serious drinking problems.

Lynch frequented many bars, but never if they were in a neighborhood with a Protestant majority.

He was not welcome.

They were many years of getting into the shoes of members or sympathizers of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

From Paul Hill (one of the Guildford Four) in

(1993), to Bobby Sands (who died in 1981 while on hunger strike in Maze Prison) in

(1996).

He was the unofficial face of Irish nationalist suffering, and he is proud of it.

“It was my contribution to the cause,” he explains.

“They were films that spoke of the reality that I lived, of the fear that I felt since I was nine years old and the British army arrived in our neighbourhood”.

What he lived in his childhood determined his entire career.

His father and his mother met in England.

She emigrated from Italy and he from Northern Ireland.

They fell in love, had children and in 1969 they packed up their things to settle permanently in hell, which in those years was called Northern Ireland.

Within all the bad they chose the worst.

They moved to the south of County Armagh, which was then the most militarized region in all of Western Europe, due to the heavy presence of Provisional IRA troops.

They were at the border.

In the middle of the road that separates Dublin and Belfast, which was then one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

Irish Protestants were in favor of staying in the UK, and Catholics were fighting for independence.

Lynch was raised in a Catholic family.

Between the barricades and the smell of gasoline from

.

Like the boy with whom Kenneth Branagh portrays his childhood in

.

He tells that his own grandfather belonged to the IRA.

"The political tension was in the streets and at home, there was no way to escape."

The British army was not welcome in his city.

From a young age he learned to be on constant alert, to be suspicious of everyone.

“Every day when he was 10 or 11 years old, he would take a longer walk than normal after school to avoid running into the British police.

He tried to avoid the road by all means ”.

"The only thing we knew for sure," he says, "is that the British army was not our people."

Actor John Lynch poses for the press in Madrid, during the presentation of the new season of the series 'The Head'.Beatriz Velasco (WireImage)

Steeped in this nationalist sentiment, it is not surprising that he took his first steps as an actor playing roles in Irish, encouraged by a high school teacher.

His first big break came when he was only 22 years old, without even finishing his training at the London School of Dramatic Art.

He starred in

(Pat O'Connor, 1984), the story of a young man from the IRA who falls in love with Marcella (Helen Mirren), a Catholic woman whose husband, a Protestant police officer, had been murdered a year earlier at the hands of the group. terrorist.

He fit the role perfectly.

So much so that in the following years he would repeat it in successive films with slight variations.

He aided his haunted face, and years of preparation in the dark and warlike landscape of Northern Ireland.

He assures that he had many doubts before accepting the task of interpreting Bobby Sands, one of the great symbols of the Irish nationalist movement, who died in prison after 66 days without eating.

“It had been a very short time since he died on a hunger strike, and I thought that if he went wrong, a lot of people might be offended,” he says.

Great directors like Jim Sheridan, Neil Jordan or Ken Loach approached the Northern Irish conflict, leaving very notable films along the way.

Lynch had the opportunity to work with some of them, and also with Daniel Day-Lewis, winner of three Oscars.

"When you work with him you realize why he is one of the greatest actors in the history of cinema."

Remember that before filming began on

, Jim Sherindan met them in a bar to discuss some last-minute details.

“I had already seen Daniel a few times before that meeting, although we weren't friends yet,” he says.

“He showed up at the bar speaking with his natural London accent.

A week later I saw him again for the start of the shoot, and suddenly I was met by a person who had a perfect West Belfast accent.

And so it continued throughout the shoot.

I have never seen such a commitment in my entire acting career.”

Lynch's reputation, on the other hand, was called into question by many producers during the years that he was most affected by his addiction to alcohol.

His drinking problems began when he was very young.

“There are people who stop drinking when they notice that alcohol makes them feel bad.

I basically did the opposite."

There were problems in some shoots.

Insults to producers and violent behavior.

“First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes the man,” he notes.

Nobody wanted to work with him.

"At that point he was cornered."

It was just after finishing the Best

, which he had paid for out of his own pocket.

He began to inquire into his disease.

He managed to stop drinking and set out to straighten out his life.

He had no offer on the table.

He remembered that since he was little he had liked literature, and he decided to sit down and write.

"I used writing not as therapy, but as a way to be honest with myself."

The first five months “were terrible”, nothing came of it.

He kept insisting and suddenly he found a story.

"I finished writing the novel and sent it to a publisher in Dublin."

The response was positive.

The book,

, was published in 2005, and received positive reviews.

“If I had to choose the most important moment of my entire career, I would choose the day the first copy of the book arrived at my house,” he says.

He is already on his fourth novel.

He lives in Nice, with his wife Christine.

He does not forget the dark years he lived through in Northern Ireland, and is glad to have put the years of violence behind him.

"98% of the Irish are convinced that the only way is dialogue," he says.

His latest project is the series

, with Spanish production and direction.

Arthur Wilde, the character he plays, is one of the few survivors of the previous season that has been kept to give continuity to the new chapters.

They have changed the research center in Antarctica —where the first part of the plot takes place— for a ship on the high seas.

They maintain the claustrophobic settings, which for the most part have been recorded in Spain.

He has a solid film career behind him, more as an essential secondary than as a great protagonist.

In the series

(2013), starring Gillian Anderson, he played Jim Burns, a troubled police chief searching for a serial killer on the streets of Belfast.

“The writer of the series used very well those shadows that I grew up in and tried to escape from.

Northern Ireland is beginning to move on from what has happened, and out of that shadow of death emerges this serial killer.

It's totally believable that the city could spawn someone like him."

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