{"id":209460,"date":"2025-12-01T10:46:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T10:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/209460\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T10:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T10:46:12","slug":"every-time-i-finish-a-job-i-think-i-could-never-work-again-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/209460\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Every time I finish a job, I think I could never work again\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sin\u00e9ad Keenan<\/a> recalls her childhood Christmases in Dublin with vivid detail. The festivities began \u201cat the crack of dawn on Christmas Eve\u201d, when she and her siblings \u2013 Gr\u00e1inne and Rory Keenan (now also actors) \u2013 piled bleary-eyed into the family car in Dublin<\/a>, and set off to start the run of events with a fry-up at Bewley\u2019s Caf\u00e9. They\u2019d watch the RT\u00c9<\/a> Radio 1 Christmas Eve Show from Grafton Street with Gay Byrne<\/a>, meet family friends for drinks at either the Westbury Hotel or Davy Byrnes, and then head home to get to bed early. \u201cAs a kid, it\u2019s the one night of the year you\u2019re dying to sleep early, because the big fella was arriving,\u201d she recalls with a wistful smile. <\/p>\n

\u201cOn Christmas Day, we\u2019d get up to see if we got anything, then we\u2019d put on our good Christmas clothes and go to Mass \u2013 but of course\u202fwe\u2019d just be dying to go home to play with whatever we got. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy mum is from Belfast, so my nana and papa would come down from Belfast, and we\u2019d have the Great Big Christmas Dinner. The following day, my mum would have all her side over, so that was another big meal, with 16 or 17 of us.\u201d <\/p>\n

The festivities don\u2019t stop there: December 27th is Keenan\u2019s birthday, though \u201cby the time the 27th rolls around, people have overdosed on cheese, wine and food, and there\u2019s a feeling of \u2018Oh dear, do we have to do this again?\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n

Instead, she now treats Mother\u2019s Day as her special day, spending it with her husband, TV and commercial director Chris McGill (who got into the Christmas spirit early this year as director of the EastEnders festive specials), and two sons (aged 10 and eight). <\/p>\n

The family are based in Stratford-upon-Avon \u2013\u202fKeenan moved to the UK after leaving Fair City in 2003 to see what it had to offer \u2013 but usually return to Ireland to continue tradition as much as possible. This year they\u2019re staying in the UK for a change \u201cbut we\u2019ll go over the weekend before, so we\u2019ll get our Irish Christmas,\u201d Keenan says. <\/p>\n

This season of gift-giving is a chance to splash out on her boys, but Keenan is also keen to not spoil them. \u201cWhen they were born, we said we\u2019d have a one-in, one-out rule with toys, but that didn\u2019t work. Now, we get them involved in choosing what to give away, and Christmas is a good opportunity to teach them they\u2019re bloody lucky.\u201d <\/p>\n

The festive break will be a much-needed one for Keenan, having spent three months this year filming the newest series of Unforgotten<\/a>, the Bafta-winning detective drama in which she pairs alongside Sanjeev Bhaskar to find the truth behind long-standing grisly cases. Before that, she spent an \u201cintense but brilliant\u201d six months on How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, the newest output from the team behind Derry Girls<\/a> including writer Lisa McGee<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"SineadSinead Keenan: ‘If I\u2019m lucky enough to be asked to put myself up for good stories and good scripts, I\u2019ll be very happy’ <\/p>\n

In the upcoming Netflix series she stars alongside Caoilfhionn Dunne (Love\/Hate, Industry) and Roisin Gallagher (The Lovers, The Dry), as tight-knit friends who embark on an adventure across Ireland to piece together the truth of the past when the fourth member of their friendship group dies. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Unforgotten: Sin\u00e9ad Keenan\u2019s fantastic as the new Nicola Walker. What\u2019s with the accents, though?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Keenan\u2019s fourth time bringing Lisa McGee\u2019s work to life: they worked on flat share horror-comedy Being Human, London Irish (McGee\u2019s first foray into sitcoms), and the critical and commercial triumph Derry Girls. <\/p>\n

Keenan says there are parallels with Derry Girls: \u201cThere\u2019s that Northern humour and comedy. The three women were in school together, and there are flashbacks to that time,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very much like three sisters \u2013 there\u2019s no walking on eggshells, no airs and graces,\u201d Keenan says of the protagonists. \u201cThey know exactly the chinks in each other\u2019s armour, and where to place that spear, but they would die for each other. My closest friends are still from secondary school, and those formative years create bonds that are absolutely precious. You rarely see that dynamic with women, particularly older women, in a road trip situation.\u201d <\/p>\n

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is due to air in February 2026, by which time Keenan will be well into filming the seventh series of Unforgotten. \u201cThis series is loosely based on people who were involved in the British care system in their younger years. It\u2019s eye-opening and not pretty.\u201d <\/p>\n

This will be Keenan\u2019s third reprise of DCI Jessie James (yes, like the outlaw), though she\u2019s aware that acting can rarely provide job security. \u201cEven when I signed up with Unforgotten, I was contracted for two series, but that doesn\u2019t actually mean I\u2019d get to do them,\u201d she says. \u201cBut that\u2019s the nature of the beast. If you go into this ridiculous profession, you\u2019re never settled or comfortable. Every time I finish a job, I think that could be it, I could never work again.\u201d <\/p>\n

It makes it hard to have a career plan, especially as \u201cyou\u2019re at the mercy of so many other people\u2019s decisions and variables. And women after a certain age can fall off a cliff in this industry, though it\u2019s getting better: we\u2019re gently stepping off the cliff now rather than falling. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d just like to keep at it,\u201d she says, looking to the future. \u201cIf I\u2019m lucky enough to be asked to put myself up for good stories and good scripts, I\u2019ll be very happy.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sin\u00e9ad Keenan recalls her childhood Christmases in Dublin with vivid detail. The festivities began \u201cat the crack of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[114729,434,16838,18,117,19,17,105619,114728],"class_list":{"0":"post-209460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-bewley-s","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-christmas","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-it-s-christmas-magazine","16":"tag-sinead-keenan"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115643913594092930","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}