“ I had to get a man called Ulrick to do the offlines for me,” Robert starts. “ It was such an honour for me to act with him and also he didn’t know how much time he had left and I really thought it was amazing that he spent his last while challenging himself with a role like this one.”īen Barnes & Pete Postlethwaite in Killing Bonoīoth Ben and Robert had to send in audition tapes for their respective roles as both were filming. ” It was bittersweet because he was so ill,” Ben Barnes recalls. Cast and crew alike bore witness to the great man’s final film role before his death from pancreatic cancer in January. Pete himself also features in the film, as Neil and Ivan’s camp London landlord. Initially we were only to see Bono when he was 18/19 years old but I brought him right through to the Joshua Tree era because Martin just nailed the part so well.” Postlethwaite previously starred alongside McCann in Richard Attenborough’s 2007 feature ‘Closing the Ring’. What happened then was that I offered him the role on the spot and, as I saw more of him, upped how much Bono features in the movie. Then Pete Postlethwaite rang me and suggested Martin who I then brought in to see me. ” I refused to audition a lot of people who were interested because I knew they wouldn’t be able to do it. “ Martin was the only actor I auditioned for the role,” Nick Hamm (Godsend) confirms.
In deVito’s stead, Belfast actor and recent IFTA winner Martin McCann (Swansong – Story of Occi Byrne) was brought in to bring the rocker to the screen. The big question was always ‘Who is going to play Bono?’ “ The edge wanted Danny deVito to play Bono and for Brad Pitt to play him,” Neil reveals. As painstakingly explored in the film, neither Neil nor Ivan McCormick is famous. Where a biopic such as this is concerned, casting is an essential factor. “It’s a lot more entertaining and dramatic than anything I could have concocted for myself,” Neil admits. Thus ‘Porridge’ scribes, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were duly brought in and, poetic license in hand, invited to give the film more comic and dramatic body. “ Nick said to me, ‘The problem with your life darling, is that there’s no third act’,” he explains. Not least because a film version of his early life will go on nationwide theatrical release, but also because the term ‘loosely based’ became more and more apt as the film’s script work evolved. Neil McCormick is very nervous about the film’s April 1st release. The film also stars Peter Serafinowicz (Shaun of the Dead, Couples Retreat) Stanley Townsend (Happy-Go-Lucky, Omagh) recent IFTA winning actor Martin McCann (Clash of the Titans) as a teenage Bono. Sadly for them, so did their classmates and rivals, who go on to become U2.
In ‘Killing Bono’ Ben Barnes (Dorian Gray, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) and Robert Sheehan (Cherrybomb, The Misfits) are brothers Neil and Ivan McCormick who set up a band in Dublin in the late 70’s.
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