The Irish actor recalls acting in Hostages alongside Hary Dean Stanton and Colin Firth.
Harry Dean Stanton, Ciarán Hinds and Colin Firth in Hostages (1991). Photo: Photoshot
This photograph of me with Harry Dean Stanton and Colin Firth was taken during the filming of Hostages, a Granada television drama about Brian Keenan and John McCarthy, who were kidnapped and held hostage in Lebanon in the 1980s. I was 39, had been working in theatre for 15 years and done only one or two little things on film, so this was the first time I stepped up to a big role. I played Keenan, a Northern Ireland nationalist, alongside Colin as McCarthy, a very English journalist. As we started filming, in 1991, Keenan had been liberated but McCarthy hadn’t. The script, written by Bernard MacLaverty, dealt with the deep bond they formed during the four years they were held hostage. When the director David Wheatley asked Keenan to be involved he said, ‘I will neither help nor hinder you.’
In this scene Keenan and McCarthy are sharing a cell with three Americans, one of whom was played by the great Harry Dean Stanton. He rolled cigarettes that were the thinnest I’d ever seen, and he used to play the harmonica quietly to himself between takes.
Filming took six weeks. We visited Israel for three days to do exterior filming, and the rest was filmed in Manchester, mostly in a disused leisure centre in Warrington where they set up all the cells.
In this scene Keenan and McCarthy are sharing a cell with three Americans, one of whom was played by the great Harry Dean Stanton. He rolled cigarettes that were the thinnest I’d ever seen, and he used to play the harmonica quietly to himself between takes.
Filming took six weeks. We visited Israel for three days to do exterior filming, and the rest was filmed in Manchester, mostly in a disused leisure centre in Warrington where they set up all the cells.
It was very strange. The shots go from somewhere in the Bekaa Valley, with a dusty white landscape, through to a very dark corridor and into a hovel, which was in fact in Warrington. The costumes were mostly dirty rags. We had to be fairly thin and grew beards, which the make-up department added to as the years went by.
We spent most of the six weeks with blindfolds on, chained by the foot, on a mattress in a cell. It was quite bonding being stuck in those conditions with Colin. Reality started to disappear after a while.
We’d each go into a different place in our heads. We didn’t carry it around with us, though, because in the evening we were ready for a drink. Some of the emotional scenes were difficult. The Hizbollah minders were played by actors from Israel. In one scene they fired water hoses at us to clean us, which was pretty horrible. Another time Colin and I were bound in parcel tape for a scene in which McCarthy and Keenan were being transferred to another cell. In reality they were bound head to foot in tape, with just two holes for breathing through their nostrils, and put in a false compartment under a lorry. It nearly killed them, I believe. We were only taped twice around our bodies, but that was bad enough. The scene where our kidnappers pulled off the tape was awful.
It was an odd time because the filming was really tough and I was away from my young family for the first time; my daughter was only nine months old. By the time the film was released in August 1992 McCarthy had been liberated.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8995682/Flashback-Ciaran-Hinds-remembers-playing-Brian-Keenan-in-1991.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8995682/Flashback-Ciaran-Hinds-remembers-playing-Brian-Keenan-in-1991.html
