There may have been no more in-demand actor in the second half of the twenty teens than Domhnall Gleeson. And then -- poof! Twenty twenty came and he was gone.
Let's consider the chronology.
If you were paying close enough attention -- and I must admit I was not -- you'd have been tracking Brendan's son for his role as a Weasley brother in the final two Harry Potter movies. Taken in combination with an appearance he made in Never Let Me Go in 2010, Domhnall Gleeson was actually in a movie that made my top 30 two years in a row, as Never Let Me Go was my #28 movie of that year and the final Harry Potter movie, Deathly Hallows Part 2, actually cracked my top ten of 2011, finishing just outside my top five at #6.
But if I'm being honest, I wasn't really tracking him until About Time in 2013. That's when I remember learning his name. It's a thing you'd remember, as you don't meet someone named "Domhnall" every day. It was around then that I figured out his relationship to Brendan.
It was in 2015 that he really took off, with Ex Machina, and of course that year also ended with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. For a few years after that, he was incendiary. Between 2015 and 2019, there were two more Star Wars sequels, The Revenant, my personal favorite mother!, Doug Liman's American Made and a couple of movies aimed at kids, Goodbye Christopher Robin (which I haven't seen) and Peter Rabbit.
And then after that, the aforementioned poof!
I suppose the reason Gleeson's disappearing act seems so total is because until I saw him in Fountain of Youth today, I had forgotten that he was gone -- and then it made me contemplate and just how gone he has been.
I think Gleeson shares something with Star Wars co-star Adam Driver in that just looking at him, you would never have expected him to become a star. But there was something about his persona that made it impossible to take your eyes off him, and once his stardom was confirmed via casting in a bewildering succession of major movies in a short period of time, it seemed like he'd be a star forever.
But then, poof!
Wikipedia characterizes what's happened in his career since 2020 as a "pivot" to television and theater, and sure enough, you can find Gleeson popping up in those places. But an actor rarely chooses to go TV when he's at the height of his powers, though I suppose perhaps his role as the sniveling General Hux could have typecast him a bit.
And it's not like age got him either. He's only just now 42. For actors (though sadly not for actresses), that still leaves you with 20 more years of prime.
I rooted around a bit more on Wikipedia but no, no cancellations or personal setbacks that I could see.
Who knows, maybe Gleeson's sudden fame was a fluke after all. I'd like to tell you I was glad to see him back in Fountain of Youth, but really, Guy Ritchie's film doesn't use him all that well -- just one of its many faults that I won't get into right now.
However, the Gleeson who bowled me over in the second half of last decade, coming from nowhere and convincing me that it was right that he was everywhere, is someone I'd be glad to have return. If he did actually choose to pivot away from movies, he appears to have pivoted back now, as he's got another movie with Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney, Echo Valley, set to release next Friday on the same streamer as Fountain of Youth: AppleTV+.
If the Gleesonaissance is here, the return of Gleeson's domhnination, I'm ready for it.
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