It’s one thing to be a movie actress portraying a character in a secretive anti-government group, but it’s a far different to be a person in real life battling a government every day. In movies, guns fire blanks; in real life, they shoot bullets.
So, when actress Rose McGowan told reporters at a Toronto film festival press conference for her new movie ”Fifty Dead Men Walking” that if she had lived through Northern Ireland’s ”Troubles,” she would have joined the Irish Republican Army, she almost immediately drew a protest from the very man upon whose life the film is based.
“I imagine had I grown up in Belfast I would have 100 percent joined the IRA,” said McGowan, 35, who plays a high-ranking IRA femme fatale in the movie, alongside British actors Jim Sturgess and Ben Kingsley.
“My heart just broke for the cause and I have a lot of respect for the intelligence and the honor that these people carried.”
“Fifty Dead Men Walking,” which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday, is based on Martin McGartland’s best-selling 1997 memoir of a young Catholic hustler living in Belfast in the late ’80s who was recruited by British intelligence to infiltrate the IRA.
McGartland, who is still in hiding and lives under a false identity on the British mainland, responded with a statement on Thursday slamming McGowan’s off-the-cuff remarks.
“Such comments are deeply offensive and hurtful to victims of IRA terrorism,” he said.
McGowan, whose father is Irish, was born and raised in Italy. Could she really know what it meant to be an IRA member just because she was in a movie? Are statements such as hers made by actors ”deeply offensive and hurtful” to people on both sides of an issue who have suffered in real life? They are interesting questions, and we’d like to know readers’ views.
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For someone of Irish descent to say they would have supported the IRA’s struggle against British tyranny during ‘The Troubles’ is about as controversial as an American saying they would have supported George Washington and the Patriots during the Revolutionary War. Well, duh.
- Posted by Robert in USAi grew up in belfast and there was bad stuff on both sides but we are trying to move on now, why does anybody really care what she thinks ? its because deep down nothing has changed my side wants the brits out and the prods know they are on the rocky road to dublin, the ira were a means to an end and that end is coming soon, give ireland back to the irish,do you not think 800 years of pillage is enough
- Posted by columSaying something is the case doesn’t make it true.
The IRA were not terrorists, they fought a war against an army of occupation. Terrible things happen in wars, the IRA never intentionally killed innocent people. If we are talking about terrorists let’s talk about the British Army, bloody sunday for starters eh? If the IRA hadn’t existed then it is doubtful that any people who were not Unionists would be left in the North and Ireland would have no chance of being united. The Provos didn’t start the war.
The girl has done nothing wrong, shame on all of you who attack her and paint her to be some kind of evil person because she does not agree with your misguided views on Irish politics.
- Posted by TommyDid she give a thought for those children murdered by the IRA or when she took tips from the torturers of the IRA in secret meetings did she ever consider the children who have had to grow up fatherless because of these torturers and killers.
I wonder how she would feel if her mum or dad was shot dead at a dinner table, or if she had a child showered with glass at a bombing or if her brothers legs got blew off?
May God forgive her evil and sick comments.
- Posted by PeterSaying that she would have joined the IRA doesn’t necessarily mean that she is expressing sympathy.
- Posted by RellandI wonder if McGowan gave money to the IRA and if that money was spent buying arms from Arab states, money then used to train individuals to do things like for example fly into towers.
- Posted by JoeHaving grown up in Northern Ireland, seeing first hand the pain on both sides of the conflict these remarks are, in this day and age and on the anniversary of September 11th stupid, thoughtless, insulting and not helpful in a time when Northern Ireland’s wounds are only just healing from 30 years of bloodshed. I’m sure this Z list two a penny actress has some romantasized view of Northern Ireland made up from hearing ‘one sided fireside stories from the homeland’. I think she should retract her misguided views.
- Posted by AlanAmericans say Brits out of Ireland, we will when you return America to the people you stole it from. Americans: murderers, colonialists and robbers from 1776 to now.
- Posted by traceyI love the completely clueless responses from Americans who somehow think that the IRA, who were ‘representing’ a small minority of people in Northern Ireland, were somehow a force for good. They were murderers and torturers.
Rose McGowan does, of course, have every right to say what she said - and we have every right to point out how sickening a point of view it is.
She’s clearly a clueless, naive woman with little grasp of history or politics.
- Posted by CiceroWho really cares about the opinions of another talentless freak from the USA who thinks she knows about the Troubles just because she was in some film and her daddy drove her across Ireland when she was a spoiled brat staring stupidly out of the car window listening to his rants?
- Posted by donnaI would like to see her justify her comments to the faces of the families of the Disappeared and the victims of atrocities from the Mainland and Ulster.
To make such a tasteless comment on the eve of the anniversary of a terrorist attack on her own adopted country shows how crass the idiot is.
Did she want to be a witch when she was in Charmed as well?
I suggest the next director casts her as in astronaut and she can get all fired up about that ’cause’ and get lost in space.
Good to see so many posts from the USA in view of the fact that so many of them helped fund the IRA and also so soon after remembering the deaths of their own people at the hands of terrorists.
- Posted by JohnnyThis woman needs a reality check. Maybe she should talk to the lady who on her 50th birthday was fortunate enough to see the bomb the IRA had planted below her car two days ago befoe it went off. Apparently the IRA made a mistake the bomb was meant for someone else. The lady they targeted is a school teacher with no connection to terrorists. I find this so called actress comments offensive to say the least mainly because the good people of Northern Ireland are still suffering at the hands of the IRA. Maybe not quite so much as before now the Americans have stopped paying the IRA to murder.
- Posted by ElizabethA woman’s nature is to nurture not kill. I cant believe she said this, its disgusting, support for the IRA child killers. Horrible to say the least.
- Posted by AnnWhat a naive statement. Could someone not have educated this woman before the film was due to be released just in case the issue happened to be addressed? Duh!
- Posted by FIPerhaps she should have carried out some research into the history of Northern Ireland before taking on the role.
So many people will be hurt by this utter rubbish - I can really see her, in hard reality, in a pub on the Falls or Bogside, organising or even discussing political matters or operations……….. yeah right.
Femme Fetale - Fatal statement!
I know that Rose McGowan has every right to express her opinion but does she realise the upset that saying such a thing can (and has) caused?
The IRA were terrorists. ETA are terrorists. Al-Qaeda are terrorists. What makes them terrorists? They killed many innocent people to persue a political cause.
I truly hope that it was a misguided expression of her sympathy for ‘the cause’ and not agreement with the methods used.
Would she agree with ETA’s bombings of Madrid?
- Posted by CarolineHow stupid is this girl?? Does she really think she can make a comment of this manner and think none of the irish people will be offended? For any body that doesn’t live here you have no right to form an opinion of our troubles and what we all suffered and went through, no matter what side you came from. There would be chaos if a similar comment was made of 9/11. Once again a dumb american opens their mouth without getting all of the facts!! Typical!!
- Posted by BearThese people tried to force their ways because they would loose by democracy, they are the agressors in all of this. They were given concessions for Southern Ireland years ago but they wanted more. They wanted the British Protestants in Ireland to become part of the Republic and caused havoc for British living in republican areas. The IRA that this movie is about are also the latter IRA (i.e. modern day IRA), they had no exscuse, they were the worst of the worst, drug dealers , gangsters & indiscriminate killers that incedently killed more Irish catholics (there own people) than were killed by the opposition!!!
- Posted by UVF1690I am absolutely appalled by Rose’s comments but not shocked. There is a very common romanticised notion that the IRA were/are ‘freedom fighters’ that seems to be prevalent - in my experience - especially in America where so many people cling to the ‘Irish-American’ tag (My great, great grandfather once visited Ireland therefore I am Irish etc etc). It is important that brainless, uninformed and offensive comments like these and the fools that make thoughtless and ignorant comments praising those who have inflicted pain and misery on other people are rebuked and mocked for the half wits they are. Lets hope that the victims of crime in Ireland and beyond don’t let her badly informed comments bother them and that Ms. McGowan’s less than impressive career to date is the only thing that suffers from lack of understanding of the troubles.
- Posted by From BelfastI am highly dissapointed at the lack of balance in these comments. Facts are, that as much innocent people that the ira killed, (overwhelmingly in error) the British army were responsible for the most heinous crimes of the war. Look up the seemingly forgotten Ballymurphy massacre for even the merest glimpse. Just one of countless incidents. The british army killed more civilians than armed combatants. The ira killed far more occupying forces than civilians. Thats not to say taht those civilian deaths were acceptable. They were not. But the ira were always quick to apologise, because the whole republican movement was absolutley gutted after enniskillen, guilford, etc. Even the most impartial observers ofetn noted taht but for the war most ira pows would likely have been teachers, lawyers, community activists writers. These were intelligent men.
The british army killed and maimed countless civilians on behalf of an apartheidesque regime, never apologising, and perfectly aware that they were just shooting ‘taigs’, white niggers as it were. Whatever about the continuance of the war, those who rose in 1969 did so due to the lack of any alternative. Democracy was nonexistant at the time.
The country was occupied by terrorists. and anyone who truly believes that the ira was sectarian is hopelessly ill informed.
- Posted by BlissettHey Sean, to summarise your post, because Bobby Sands was half-Protestant and because the IRA killed Catholics as well as Protestants, they’re not sectarian, right? Does that mean the IRA were justified in murdering thousands of civilians and members of the security forces?
As for “Up the Ra”, how about “SAS, Bang, Bang, Bang”?
- Posted by Dean