Geraldine Hughes: Stallone, Friel and an Indelible Sense of Place

About the author:
Geraldine Hughes burst onto the theatrical scene four years ago with her autobiographical one-woman show Belfast Blues, a tour-de-force in which she played 24 characters and reflected on her childhood in strife-torn Northern Ireland in the 1970s and '80s. The play drew critical praise in Los Angeles, New York, London, Chicago, and her hometown of Belfast. One of six children, Hughes left the high-rise housing project she grew up in to attend UCLA's School of Theatre, Film & Television, then launched her acting career in the United States. Though she has performed the works of Martin McDonagh The Cripple of Inishmaan and Conor McPherson The Weir, she's just now getting around to the king of Irish drama, Brian Friel, in the Manhattan Theatre Club's Broadway revival of Translations. And if that's not enough, Hughes is giving a touching, utterly believable performance opposite Sylvester Stallone in the current big-screen release Rocky Balboa. Broadway.com asked the busy actress to reflect on how her Irish roots have affected her life and career.

As I began rehearsing Brian Friel's masterpiece Translations, I was also getting ready for the release of my first major Hollywood film, Rocky Balboa. On the surface, the two pieces—and the characters I play in them—would seem to have nothing in common. In Translations, Bridget attends a "hedge school" in rural Ireland the 1800s, set up to educate the people before the British established a national school system and banned the use of Gaelic. In Rocky Balboa, Marie is scraping out a living as a bartender in South Philadelphia, the single mother of a teenage son. But both women are straight shooters with strong ties to their struggling communities. And both the play and movie have an indelible sense of place, something I can identify with as an American citizen who was born and raised in West Belfast, Ireland.

When I joined the ensemble of Translations, I had the immediate notion that I was negotiating different "tribes." I regard myself as an American; I've lived here for more than 17 years, I've been married to an American for 10 years and I became a citizen two years ago. But I'm an Irish-born woman with an Irish accent. When the actors from Ireland came over, I found myself relating to them in a very "Irish" way. Then I'd turn around and feel just as comfortable talking to the American actors. I realized that I was indeed now a product of both cultures. Translations deals with the issue of crossing over into forbidden tribes and the terrible consequences of that. Friel's masterful play is an Irish story, set in a specific historic time, with strong universal resonance. Audiences from different backgrounds can relate to it on so many levels.

Someone recently asked Sylvester Stallone why he cast me as Marie, Rocky's confidante, the grown-up version of a little girl the boxing champion had befriended on the streets. He said something like, "I saw the struggle in her eyes, and I knew that she would understand Marie's pain." When I got to the movie location in South Philly, where most of my scenes were shot, I felt very much at home. I related to the poverty and desolation and isolation immediately. If you come from the projects, you come from the projects, no matter what your accent is or what color your skin is; if you get out of that high-rise alive, you are lucky, and if you get out with your sanity intact, you are even luckier.

I was lucky, but I was also a dreamer and I knew how to work hard to achieve my dream. The place tells you that you have no hope, but your heart and your determination prove that place wrong. If I hadn't made the move to America to attend college, I could have been a Marie…no doubt about that

As filming progressed, I found myself working not only with Sylvester Stallone the icon, but Sylvester Stallone the storyteller and artist. We collaborated together on Marie's character and her relationship with Rocky. I would go in for rehearsals and he would have written new scenes for me; we would talk through them and even do some editing together. On the set, Sly likes to improv, which was intimidating at first, but it became a magical process of developing who these people were to each other in a very organic way.

Just like Marie, if you are born into in a place that tells you you're not going to go anywhere and you can't accomplish anything, then it might be said there's no hope for you. But if you have the strength to take the slaps and the rejection and keep moving forward, you will get what you want. That's what I believe, anyway. My journey hasn't been easy, but it's been worth it. I feel very blessed.