Last night Scannain was on the red (or blue in this particular instance) carpet for the Dublin première of the biggest film of the year, Michael Bay’s fourth outing in the Transformers saga, Transformers: Age of Extinction. The fans turned out in force to witness local boy turned future global superstar Jack Reynor, who stars as one of the leads in the film, and who was bringing the première to his town.
Reynor, suitability humbled and overawed by the reception, was quick to mention the great reception that he received “I made this film for my friends and family. It’s so good to be home, and to get such a warm welcome from everybody here.”
The star has been on a whirlwind, worldwide adventure since the film started its promotional tour, with stops in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, New York, Berlin and finally Dublin. Reynor has 10 days at home before jetting off to Rio for the next leg of the tour, but for now he is going to take a break with some home comforts.
For Reynor, who made his break as the titular character in Lenny Abrahamson’s What Richard Did, Transformers:Age of Extinction marks the biggest film of his career. “I always wanted to make an event film, from the time that I was 5 years of age. And I was blessed with the opportunity to do that at 22.”
Reynor’s role as Shane Dyson, was a lot more physically demanding that his previous film-work, but he still found a lot of himself in the character. “I had to do a lot of physical training, drift training, and you know my character was very relatable to me as he’s a young Irish race car driver whose trying to carve a name out for himself in Texas. And when I went out to Hollywood I was a young Irish independent actor trying to carve out a name for himself there. Those two different people aren’t very dissimilar from each other.”
Michael Bay is one of the few directors who still manages to get practical effects into films whenever he can, and Reynor was quick to talk that up. “It’s amazing. Not a lot of people make films like that anymore, but Michael Bay does. That’s one of the special things about his films and why they are as successful as they are I think. As a young independent film actor it was a great opportunity to really muck in and to experience something that I would never otherwise experience in any career or any walk of life.”
Reynor isn’t the only Irish talent in the film, with emerging actor Glenn Keogh featuring at the start of the film as a gruff Irish geologist in the Artic circle. The LA resident was enjoying his time back home with the movie and was keen to emphasise what makes this Transformers the best of the bunch. “It’s louder, it’s longer, it’s a total new reboot, we have our Jack in there and Jack did a fantastic job. People asked has he replaced Shia, but when you see the movie you’ll see.”
Asked about working with Michael Bay, Keogh stated that the director was great to work with and even let him impact the character. “He let me have a little bit if input in relation to how I played it. He wanted me to be a little bit crazier than I originally read the character, which was great. That gave me licence to go nuts, but he did have to ask me to stop cursing! He said be more Irish so I through a few F-bombs in there, so he went a couple less! It was great fun.”
Having worked predominately in TV up to this point Keogh was enjoying his red/blue-carpet experience. “I’m loving the experience, but I’m a bit disappointed it’s not red! It was grey in New York last week, and now it’s blue here. I would’ve liked the tricolour! It’s great, I brought some family with me here tonight and some friends with me. And it’s just great for the kids to get an opportunity to experience the madness.”
Elsewhere on the blue carpet stars from reality TV mixed with actors from Love/Hate, while a bevy of models took the opportunity to have more people take their photographs, MC for the evening MTV’s Laura Whitmore pressed the flesh.
