Brendan Gleeson

Two actors played Martin Cahill within a year of each other, and Geoffrey Macnab set the two readings against each other in a 1999 British Film Institute review: Brendan Gleeson, whom he calls the star of John Boorman's The General, builds the thief as a cheerful, genial, latter-day MacHeath, while Kevin Spacey's version is colder, more calculating and far more self-absorbed. Gleeson leads the cast Macnab is talking about. Richard Kelly, reviewing Troy, finds Orlando Bloom's prince painfully raw and suggests the beating he takes from Gleeson's Menelaus might draw applause. Troy puts him sixth, at the end of its list.