Colm Meaney in Irish Gaelic movie

Colm Meaney brushed off his rusty Gaelic skills recently for his role in the Irish Kings movie.

As reported at Variety, Kings, in which Meaney plays the role of Joe Mullan, has become the first film submitted by Ireland for consideration in the foreign-language film category of the Academy Awards. Kings is about Gaelic-speaking Irish laborers searching for identity in 1970s London.

"It was a bit of a challenge for me," said Meaney, "as I learned Gaelic in high school, but I've been living in Los Angeles for 24 years. I was supportive of the idea, as there hasn't been a modern feature film in the Irish language like this."

Meaney, best known to Star Trek fans for his role of Miles O'Brien in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine spoke briefly about his Star Trek experience. Meaney found that his early training at the Abbey in Dublin, Dublin's national theater, helped him with his Star Trek dialogue. "When you looked at the 'Star Trek' dialogue," he explained, "you needed actors with a strong theater background who could play Shakespeare, as it's heightened drama. Suspension of disbelief is required."

Meaney is working on other projects, such as: Three and Out, a black comedy about a London subway driver; ZOS: Zone of Separation, a Canadian miniseries about U.N. peacekeepers during the war in Bosnia; and the BBC's Life on Mars. When asked if he had any involvement with Star Trek XI, he laughed and said, "Seven years in space was sufficient."

Meaney will be honored at a pre-Oscars party for Irish actors, according to Metro.co.uk, where he as well as Irish actress Fiona Shaw will receive a gong from the U.S.-Ireland Alliance. The Alliance stages the annual event to bring together those in the film industry from both the U.S. and Ireland.

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