«...
His arms form a protective tangle when he sits down in a Soho hotel, and his gaze flits back and forth to a spot awkwardly adjacent to my own. Then there's the conversation. Originally from Dublin, Gillen is the very opposite of the blarney-spouting Irishman. As he once put it, he hates small talk. But then he doesn't appear to be a great fan of big talk either. He speaks in haltingly pregnant sentences, filled with tormented pauses that make you feel as though each word has been given up only under sufferance.
+++Yet for all his "fumbling and mumbling", as he puts it, Gillen comes across as a thoughtful, perceptive and quietly amusing character, if you're prepared to withstand a few periods of disjointedness in the dialogue. Alas, many directors and casting directors are not. And for this reason, he says, he doesn't audition well.
"It might take me an hour to get to feel at ease with somebody. I don't find it easy to go into a room full of 10 people and give it all away. In the pilot season in Los Angeles I've done that a couple of times. You go in and read for all these shows, and I don't like it and I'm no good at it and it doesn't work for me."
...
"I don't feel obliged to speak," Gillen explains, possibly a little superfluously. "I can read people, and if the other person doesn't want to say anything, I'm fine with that. People say things when it's time to say them."
Some time later, David Jones, the late British director, was looking to cast Gillen in his New York production of Pinter's The Caretaker, and he called the great playwright to ask his advice. Jones told Pinter that Gillen was unable to fly over to audition, meaning that he would have to restrict his assessment of the actor to a phone conversation.
"Well that will be an interesting conversation," said Pinter, "because he's not going to say anything."
...
Gillen, it seems clear, is more of a staying-in kind of guy. With his saturnine looks, soft Irish accent and considerable acting talent, he could easily have slipped into a charismatic caricature many years ago. But instead he retains an integrity and humility that's almost surreptitiously charming.
When I tell him at the end of the interview that it's the photographer's turn to have her go, he looks like a man with a toothache in the dentist's waiting room.
"I find still photographs make me quite self-conscious," he says, as though a rolling tape doesn't. "I said to James Marsh, I'd love to be better at being still. It's something that I want to get comfortable with. Because then," he adds, breaking into a knowing smile, "I can say even less."»SOURCE