Published: Wednesday, 3rd March, 2010 5:00pm

Well Holy God: it's Mary McEvoy!

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"What I absolutely love about living in Delvin is that if I got an Oscar on Thursday and I sold ten bullocks on Friday, they would be much more interested in the price of me bullocks than the Oscar, and I love that.

"I treasure being from Delvin, I think I'd be a basket case if I wasn't because I think our industry is loopy."

That's the view of Mary McEvoy. Feet on the ground - in fact, feet in two Wellingtons, prepared for whatever agricultural life throws at her, and currently readying herself for the constant vigilance and the late nights of the forthcoming lambing season.

It's not a million miles from the life that Mary's character "Biddy" lived in her seventeen years on the much-loved series, "Glenroe", albeit without the hapless "Oh Holy God" Miley on hand to help with the workload.

But while Mary describes herself these days as a full-time farmer, she hasn't completely turned her back on the world of stage and screen. She features regularly on TV3's "Midday", amongst an all-female panel tackling the big issues of the day, and even with all that, finds time to maintain a hectic theatre schedule. In fact just now, she is on a run in Dublin's Tivoli Theatre with "The Matchmaker".

"I thoroughly enjoy Midday because it's more about yourself. Actually the first couple of weeks I did it I was terrified because it was me, I wasn't using a script, but actually I would enjoy something like that on a more permanent basis."

The road that led Mary into acting wasn't an obvious one. After all, she had what she describes as the most idyllic childhood anyone could ask for growing up in rural Delvin.

"I was an only child but my cousins used to come and stay with us every summer, and my good friends the Kellys and the Bradys and everybody down the road, we used to pal around together, there was always a gang of us," she recalls.

"I was always playing, always out in the fields, probably semi-wild!" adds Mary.

As a child, the thought of acting never entered her head, and after school, she headed to Dublin, having secured a job in the civil service.

"I used to do school plays and stuff like that but I had no idea that there were even professional actors in Ireland, I had no idea about things like that," she explains. In the city, for the want of something to do, she decided to take up night acting classes: "That was where I met a great friend of mine, Martina Stanley - who plays Dolores in Fair City - and she was actually the first person I ever met who had the dream of becoming a professional actor."

That spurred her on to attend the Oscar Wilde Theatre School, and so followed her TV career in Glenroe.

Mary's parents were, she thinks, "a bit bemused" by her move into acting.

"I think they were sad that I left home, but then when I got Glenroe of course - because Joe Lynch and Mick Lally would have been great staples in our house - they thought 'My God this is big', you know.

"Daddy would have been a typical Irish man, he was quietly happy about it all."

It was only later in life that Mary found out her father, Larry McEvoy had himself been involved in amateur dramatics in Delvin, and was apparently quite good at it too, while her mum Catherine, a nurse, was also a very charismatic person, so maybe the seed was sown before she even realised it herself.

"Glenroe was a very enjoyable show to do," she continued, "That was why one stayed in it. I certainly wouldn't advise anyone who wants to be an actor to stay in a series that long unless they didn't have ambitions to do something else because it can really narrow your choices as you get older.

"So I just decided to prepare for the worst but hope for the best, and that's what I did once I finished with Glenroe," she says.

"I think in theatre and film, older people are incidental. They're not the main characters. In French film, there's so many older people who are the actual centre of the film. I don't know why we in Ireland are not interested in the lives of older people."

As it transpired, Mary was in huge demand once she left the show, and she has been treading the boards up and down the country ever since:

"Because I do an awful lot of commercial productions I do a lot of touring, which is very tiring, and because of financial constraints within the business, I do a lot of one woman shows, which are very exacting, and that coupled with touring can be hard," she says.

The recession has affected the theatrical world too, she points out.

"It's really difficult for smaller companies to finance shows because the money just isn't there. The Arts Council just doesn't have it, they tend to give it to the bigger companies and I know a lot of smaller companies in the last number of weeks have gone to the wall," says Mary.

"It is difficult - but it's not the end of the world. I mean it's not Haiti!

"I always say that to myself - it's great to entertain people but ultimately it is not that important to people's lives.

"I do get very fed up of people going on about the arts as if it it's some kind of Mount Olympus and I don't have time for that.

"Even though I think the arts are very important, I think there is a great tendency to talk down to people, there is a huge elitism within the arts and the older I get the less enchanted I am with that whole world. I'd rather be out actually entertaining people," she explains.

Buddhism

Mary's faith in Buddhism is well known. She has always been spiritual: as a child, she was always concerned with the whys and wherefores of existence.

"Basically I started looking beyond Catholicism because of the tradition of women in the Church: I could never understand why there wasn't women priests; never could understand why men were telling us to do everything," she explains.

"There is just no feminine paradigm at all and I've no quarrel with the church in its philosophy. I've lots of quarrels with them now like everyone does now, but actually meeting Marie Collins and Christine Buckley on 'Midday' was incredibly freeing. It was like a lifetime of guilt fell off my back the day I met them because I've always felt bad for leaving the church in a way.

"I think my generation were controlled by guilt and shame which I don't think today's generation is. It was just the way it was, the 'who do you think you are' mentality.

"Reincarnation always made sense to me because to me it was the same rhythm as sleeping and waking: just a bigger cycle. So then I read about this practice of Buddhism which means you just practice a chant and that was it. It was simple - but not easy if you know what I mean," she explains.

"I can honestly say it did start a change in my life: even my own mother recognised it in me. I used to go to Mass and one day she told me that she knew my heart wasn't in it and I didn't have to go any more, and that was so incredible of her to do that: it was extraordinary of her to do that, utterly generous and I knew it made her unhappy but she still did it. I was really overwhelmed when she did that and I felt bad as well because you do always want to make your parents happy."

Religion is a major part of Mary's life. "It does inform everything I do and I pray twice a day. It makes you see beyond the surface of things: for me it's easier to see that there's a deeper story going on than just what's on the surface. Sometimes it makes life easier to live and sometimes it makes it harder but that's the way life is anyway."

Mullingar: 'funky and arty'

Praising the extraordinary community of business women in Mullingar, Mary says there is an edge to this town that many living outside the Midlands don't realise exists:

"It is a very funky arty town. Underneath it all there is a very bohemian vibe here, it's changed beyond recognition and I would love if there were any film makers with edgy raw films set in the midlands, to come to Mullingar," says Mary.

"There's a great music scene but I think there could be something more.

"And I'd love to work with younger people because I don't have very much in common with my contemporaries I'm afraid: I'm still unbiddable, I'm not conventional," she says.

"Actually I've really blossomed as person since I came home to Delvin. I've got a sense of self-confidence to exist in this crazy world and look at it and go 'no, that's bonkers'. "When I hear somebody being 'arty-farty', I kind of ask myself what would my neighbours think of this, and I think this is not real life. I cannot stand elitism, I hate it in every shape and form, particularly in the arts, I think it has no place but the arts are rife with it all the same."

Mary has been asked to write a book. Not an autobiography, she stresses, but a "Musings of McEvoy" type work. She will also be going on tour this summer with a play called "The Life and Times of Selma Maye", in which she will be starring alongside five other women. Plus, more 'Midday'.

"I'm as busy as I want to be in that area, but I'd love another Surf ad or something so I could just sit back on my laurels for a while you know, but's it's just like everything else it's just tough times, tough is okay, I can do tough," she concluded.

Catch Mary in "The Matchmaker", which opens this week in The Tivoli Theatre on Dublin's Francis Street. It runs for two weeks.