Gritty is just one broad adjective you could use to describe The Virtues, the new Channel 4 drama by Shane Meadows, the creator of This Is England. But meeting the show’s female lead, Niamh Algar, is quite the opposite; she’s bright, breezy and bursting with positivity.
The Virtues, meanwhile, has a bleaker viewpoint as it follows a troubled Joseph, played by Stephen Graham (of recent Line of Duty fame, who falls into despair when his son leaves for Australia with his ex. When he decides to travel to Ireland to face the dark demons of his past, along comes Niamh’s Dinah emblazoned with tattoos, a mullet and quite the right hook and to say it gets explosive is an understatement.
With the acting talents of this Irish 26-year-old, Niamh is fleshed out as a flawed individual who ultimately reminds us all of the power of everyday women. As Niamh herself eloquently puts it, the character shows “how resilient women are. I come from a big family, there’s three girls and two boys. My sisters and my mum are the most strong emotionally and physically that I know in my life and that’s always been the way.”
Here, the rising star of TV, who has already starred in PURE, MotherFatherSon opposite Richard Gere and is currently filming Ridley Scott’s TV directing debut for Netflix, the hotly-anticipated post-apocalyptic drama, Raised By Wolves opens up her photo diary from the past year to GLAMOUR…
I used to look completely different, before this photo. I had long, blonde hair. I moved up to Sheffield and we started working on the character for The Virtues. I had seen This Is England so I knew Shane (Meadows) has a very strong look with how he goes with characters.
It completely changed how people perceived me. The interactions I had with people after that was fascinating.People thought I was quite arty or edgy and it was very funny because I was still wearing my same ‘normal’ clothes. The character has tattoos and we were drawing them on with this Indian ink and it would stay on for quite a few days. I’m not saying I got lazy and stopped washing, but people’s perception of you alters definitely when they see tattoos on you like that.
Dinah is definitely fierce and I think her knocking someone out on her sister-in-law’s porch is very telling of her character. I have never played a female character where they are introduced to her like that and it was really exciting. We went in and did our own background on each of our characters and brought our own personal experiences to the role and we ‘workshopped’ the character with Shane. what my character goes through – which comes in later in the series near the end – did really shape her as a person so it was important for me to have done my homework on that. You’re building this layered, complex, well rounded character. He could change something on the day of filming and if he does that you know your character inside and out and you have the flexibility to react to whatever is going to come at you. I was literally living and breathing that person
The hardest thing that we all struggled with was trying to actually be vulnerable. We spend our lives almost putting on a mask and I knew for this character, she was very much on the surface a broken human being and she’s got demons that are interrupting her life. For me it was important to make sure the audience are on that journey with her and empathise with someone who is so far away from me. On set so you can go to very extreme, vulnerable places emotionally and that for me was the most liberating thing. It’s so cathartic. I genuinely think acting is my therapy so when I’m not acting, I’m at the gym so it’s almost like they replace each other. That for me is the most healthy thing mental health wise. You need outlets. Everyone has different forms of therapy.
The whole point I want to make is you shouldn’t label a character. Characters should be relatable to men and women. If you start isolating people and putting them into boxes, you can’t relate to them and that’s what I wanted to do. I love that challenge of taking someone who we judge immediately on a surface level and then by the end have the audience going, ‘that’s me!’
My first day on set Stephen Graham just came over and said to me, ‘this is going to be the best job you’re ever going to be on.’ And I was like, ‘I might as well just retire now, cheers to you both..’ I remember him saying to me, ‘if Shane told him to jump off a cliff, I would.’ His advice was just be open, that I was in safe hands. I’ve gone on to do other shows since and I’d ring up Stephen and I’d just go, ‘do you mind if I get your advice on something?’ And he’s always taken the call, always taken his time to go through it and really give me grounding advice.
This is from Channel 4’s PURE. We were all really close on this set. It was all about telling OCD from a completely different perspective that I had never been aware of. I landed the part and we met with the rest of the characters and we immediately clicked. Everyone on that show, we’ve remained in contact with.This job moves so quickly and so fast that the people you pick up along the way are few and far between but when you do make that connection with people you really embrace them. We’re all very early on in our careers and the shoot was shot during the beast from the east. It was proper cold. No amount of heaters could heat that building up.
This is me and Anthony Welsh. We went straight from playing friends in PURE to playing lovers in the feature film, Calm with Horses. On the set of PURE he was telling me that he was potentially doing this film in Ireland and I couldn’t believe it was the same job!
I took on boxing because when I was running I started thinking loads and so I wasn’t able to turn my brain off. But in boxing, you have to completely focus on the other person and to put your energy onto someone else. It’s almost like a relief for the brain as it’s switching off whatever worry or anxiety or problems you have in the day.
This is me, and it was taken by my trainer, Michael Bossman. The role I’m doing in Raised By Wolves (which is Ridley Scott’s TV directing debut on Netflix) I play an army medic and it was quite important for me to be fit. I did boxing training from 4:30am to 6am, then I would go straight onto set, straight into hair and makeup. I never felt like I was running off 6 hours sleep and by starting your day in a physical way, you’re set up for the day.
This was me jumping out of my trailer. That was on the last day of the first block of filming for Raised By Wolves. Apparently we’re not allowed to do that because it’s dangerous!
I grew up in the middle of Ireland and our house backs onto this lake. This was Easter weekend just gone and there’s hashtag no filter! I was incredibly grateful for growing up in the countryside and getting to go home to my parents house. It’s so quiet. I think you always take your home with you. It’s the pace I hit reset and pause. It’s the place I fell in love with acting by pretending to present the news and weather with my sister. When I left school, I studied design first off and while I was there it was ingrained in me that I knew I wanted to do acting.I didn’t study formally in a drama school. I learnt on the job, putting on sketch shows for TV channels in Ireland.
This job has taught me that success and failure go hand in hand. You have to experience failure in order to appreciate success. It does make you stronger. In this industry, they say you have to have thick skin but I really think you do. It’s not always because you’re not good enough. If opportunity or the role isn’t right, you can’t take it personally, that’s the main thing. You just have to go, ‘ok, what else can I do?’ You have to keep going and I once heard someone say that acting is an obsession and I do understand that. Growing up, I was obsessed with films and I was obsessed with theatre, it’s like a weird drug that is my career.
Working with Richard Gere on MotherFatherSon was amazing – this was taken on my trailer on that set. He’s so lovely and he’s a buddhist so he’s chilled. The character he played is so far removed from who he was on set. He has so much time for people. He came up to me on one of my first days and introduced himself and said how much he loved the character.
This is me in a dress – I can wear dresses! I’ve had an incredible 18 months. With photoshoots it’s so interesting seeing the promotion side of this industry. I’m just going to be a sponge – be a Spongebob! This job has also taught me a lot about femininity. There’s something so sexy about confidence, someone who’s giving you all the truth, it’s not defined by the way in which someone looks and you can’t put people into boxes anymore. The versatility of femininity is changing.
The Virtues continues on Channel 4 and you can catch up on All 4
