Chris Reilly – Favourite Things

Chris Reilly is a Scottish actor. At 31, Reilly left his job running a homeless shelter to pursue acting, graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Since then, Reilly has appeared in Guy Ritchie’s Wrath of Man, Devils on Sky Atlantic, Industry, Game of Thrones and The Head, to name but a few. In 2018, he won the BAFTA Scotland award for Best Actor in a Television Drama for his Role as Alex Baxter in BBC1’s The Last Post. He is currently starring in Slow Horses, Apple TV’s latest spy thriller television series.

These are a few of Chris Reilly’s favourite things…

My Audi A6 Estate

My car is a ten-year-old Audi A6 Estate with four-wheel drive and a 3-litre engine. It can take a ton of gravel in the back or carry five comfortably to London. It looks old but it’s fast as hell and you don’t mind the odd ding as it’s getting on a bit and adds character. It’s the first car I’ve owned outright. No payments. I picked it up from a guy in the posh part of Glasgow a few years ago — who had hastily affixed national trust stickers to the side windows, and I assume to make it seem better looked after. I remember thinking, I’ve just sat in my car and watched you put stickers on it. He seemed a bit weird, so I let it lie.

I’ve no idea how to update the sat nav, so from time to time, on new roads, it thinks it’s in open fields and loses its mind; now I just Blu Tack my phone to it. The iPod dock overrides the music from time to time but seems only to like songs beginning with an A, specifically Aretha Franklin’s “Dark End of The Street”, and you have to listen or just turn it off till you start the car again. The old geezers at the local dump know the car and let me in without question these days, and the adolescent droves passing my house to drink in the hills generally ignore it and decide not to put a bucket through the windscreen as its unthreatening slightly bashed exterior is less of a trophy. 

Family and friends

I was at the opera once, secretly betraying my working-class roots. The opera was subtitled on an electric banner above the arch, and it was beautiful. “Love is the ecstasy and cross of the heart,” flashed across the screen. I thought “you’re not effing wrong”. Mum was sick and my brother was being arrested most weekends while I struggled to cope with both and keep work going. The only thing that was keeping me going was the constant, selfless intervention of friends. They were not just carrying me; they were carrying my family. I love my family so much, but I couldn’t protect it on my own.

My friends saw that I was hurting myself trying and stepped in. How can anyone repay that? No more than I can repay the love of my family at various stages in what has been a life so full of ups and downs, it seems like lies to tell it. Neither my friends nor family care too much about my work. My family often don’t “get it”, the head-space I need to do the research and homework needed to turn up, but seem so proud of any achievement that my eyes sting when they say the smallest good things. Friends ask about this one and that is such and such cool in “real life” and mock my mincing around in ways Gen-Z would no doubt find terminally offensive. Family and friends are the best and worst of life. 

Work

I’ve worked since before I was fifteen. I was chasing dad’s car down the road every night delivering Kleeneezy and Better Ware catalogues. Fruit and veg boy at the supermarket. Three hours a night in the pharmaceutical warehouse — a trusting role for a teen. Roads and railways for the Irish squads between university terms and Equifax data input every night after. I built a convent in Leipzig and did a 36-hour shift replacing railway kerbs in a station in Glasgow’s East End (I slept for four hours in the bothy and was paid for it). I worked for Gerry Farmer painting his son’s house and he gave me a job with his agency and asked for me on his deathbed. I got there but he was sleeping already. 

I worked for the McKeowns building their survey business and they gave me money to go to Drama School when I’d worked for them for the third time. I returned to the homeless shelter I grew up in and certified it in a new category with the care commission to better structure the service we offered. I worked for the Church of Scotland in children’s homes I still go back to. And the local authority I don’t. I worked at the Boogaloo pub in London for Gerry who last month just handed me the keys to the place for a PR photo shoot. Now it sounds self-elevating. Some of these jobs were “murder”, a Glaswegian under-the-breath statement to self when you are counting the hours, “this job is f***ing murder”, but I’ve had more out than I put in every time and all of those jobs have gone some way to giving me the ability to be doing the work I love now.

Food, wine and a cigar

It’s sunset in Tenerife. There’s a restaurant my father owns fifty-fifty with a Spanish family in Los Christianos. Women braid hair. Men sell watches. Kids run in and out for a Fanta. There’s an auld fella called Antonio staggering back from a pub where they have dancing. He speaks no English and worked for the banks that built the place. He sits down and gabs away. We eat well, and my dad is there. Brandy, over glasses filled with boiling water. Inside the glass are three coffee beans and star anise. On the third, I light a cigar. If my dad’s friend O-Porto is there, he will too. Partagas Serie e n2. The cool night falls with the crashing waves and happy faces. Dad, Jorge, Antonio, Oporto. I’ll sit with the old men, understanding their conversations but not having quick enough words to do anything much more than listen. I’m buzzed on brandy and a strong cigar watching my dad’s eyes crease with laughter. He is relaxed and content. It’s a lovely feeling. 

Money

I’ve never coveted wealth. So I never cared how much I had or could lose. That was a luxury as it allowed me a certain degree of happy ignorance. I wasn’t scared of anything. I valued who I was when others did not. I gave no value to money in any deal and so could do and say what I felt creatively and had no cares.

If I valued money, I might never have risked losing it. I might have chased money in jobs and careers I had no passion for. If I had money, I might not have had the friendships and family or have acquired the portable capital and knowledge I needed more than “bank”. I might have worried myself out of many moments or joys, unable to value simple beautiful things. I might have denied love to those who love me for love of money. For paper. For things. 

Now I worry about money and not having any again. That makes me worry that I behave as previously I would not. I can’t say I never had faults, I realise that sounds painfully self-elevating, I had and have many. But motivated by money, the worst of my recent sins has been to resent the cost of grand gestures that did good for everyone but me. I couldn’t take joy in them because I resented the money it cost me. I loved what I gave more than why I gave it, who I gave it too, and the good it did. Ugly. This is why I say I love money first. Saying it out loud might save me the pain of staying in that state. It kept me staring at the mirror many times.

As a tool for change, anyone can see money’s utility and positive potential, but the change brings seems so clearly instant. That power even in small bites is intoxicating. We all want the same things. Including the power money brings. Right now, I love it. I want to be good at the job I love for who I love. I want to be “good” with money. That’s an awful lot to ask. 

Enjoyed Chris Reilly’s favourites? Explore last week’s Favourite Things here.