‘Liam Neeson wanted a go at being a film star. I didn’t have that in my DNA’ – The Irish Times

As I meet Ciarán Hinds, the most hearty and unaffected of actors, he is taking a day’s rest from filming in Co Wicklow.

“I’m working on Walk the Blue Fields,” he says. “The Claire Keegan adaptation by Conor McPherson, with John Crowley directing.”

Ah, yes. After An Cailín Ciúin and Small Things Like These, another Keegan story gets the big-screen treatment. The cast is stacked. Who else is in the Netflix production?

“Somebody called Emily Blunt?” he says in mock confusion. “A guy called Andrew Scott?”

He chortles to himself, as if flattered to be in such exalted company. In truth Hinds is rarely far from an “all-star cast” these days. A busy actor since leaving Belfast for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London, in the early 1970s, he has, in his golden years, happened upon a truly exhausting run of fecundity.

Only a few weeks ago he was, opposite Lesley Manville, in our cinemas with Midwinter Break. Just before that he starred as Will Arnett’s dad in Is This Thing On? You can see him in Netflix’s version of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden later in the year. He has just finished shooting Tom Ford’s Cry to Heaven, a period epic with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Colin Firth. I could go on.

“Over the last year or two I decided to slow down and just more or less choose – if I had the choice, which I don’t often – to get involved with things if I found them interesting. And certainly I found a few things that were very interesting to me. And they just seem to have arrived at the one time.”

[ Ciarán Hinds: ‘A lot of my friends have the same talent as me, but never got the breaks’Opens in new window ]

Here is a question. In 2022 Hinds received an Oscar nomination in the best-supporting-actor category for Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. Has that been a contributing factor to the run of high-profile jobs? Maybe that is a question for his agent.

The Three Urns, in cinemas this April, has Ciarán Hinds playing an Irishman travelling, with the ashes of his late wife, from France to his old home in Ireland

“You’re right, Donald. My agent and I work very intimately,” he says. “He knows what my taste is. Sometimes he says, ‘This is a paid job. This is probably something that you’d like to do.’ And we work on a very direct and personal basis.

“A couple of things came after the Oscar nomination – to turn up in action films playing the old crabby guy. Ha ha! No, I don’t need that. There are proper adventures to go on.”

But those action flicks come with perks.

“I think they might do. But I’m at a certain age where I’m not chasing perks.”

You will be more likely to see Hinds in something like this month’s The Three Urns. Directed by John-Paul Davidson and Stephen Warbeck, the lively, folksy comedy has Hinds playing an Irishman travelling, with the ashes of his late wife, from France to his old home in Ireland.

I would guess that part of the attraction was meeting up with old chums. The cast features such domestic legends as Lorcan Cranitch, Lalor Roddy, Sinéad Cusack, Jim Norton and Lisa Dwan. Quite a gang.

“I said, ‘Can I make some suggestions, if I’m going to be at the heart of it, about people I’d love to work with – to come up for a day, or a day and a half, and do two scenes?’ And they said, ‘Yeah’.

“It was good for me to be able to ask Jim Norton or Sinéad – people that I’d worked with – and say ‘Would you make your way up and get a decent bed for the night and decent dinner? Then we can go to work.’ It was really lovely.”

The story he has just told suggests he likes film sets to be social occasions. He looks to have the same attitude towards the promotional gauntlet. Stories amble into one another. Anecdotes wind their way around opinions. There is never a sense of him feeling under obligation to toe a line or act as salesman. Hinds just seems to enjoy being himself.

He was born, 73 years ago, in north Belfast to a doctor dad and a mum who did a bit of acting. Talking to him over the years, I have got the sense that he finds little to complain about in his childhood. These were the years before the Troubles kicked off, a period that is now rarely mulled over. Did it come as a shock when the violence began?

“It did come as a shock,” he says. “I went to St Malachy’s, a Catholic grammar school, and we weren’t taught ‘our history’ and ‘their history’. We were taught just history: European history, British history, Irish history.

“My parents were middle-class liberal Catholic, I guess. But they were open, and they mixed it up. Because my mom did a bit of drama herself. So they were mixing with people. They weren’t segregated.

“And my father, being a doctor, his practice was on the Springfield Road. So his patients all came from the Shankill and the Falls. We were brought up with no awareness of the huge tribal divide.”

Jamie Dornan, Ciarán Hinds, Jude Hill and Judi Dench in Belfast. Photograph: Rob Youngson/Focus Features

A lot more history has passed between then and now. Belfast is buzzing in a way that he (and I, for that matter) could barely imagine during the 1970s and 1980s. Is he still connected to the old manor? Does he have a sense of those social changes? He still has family there.

“I’m aware of it,” Hinds says. “I think about this younger generational thing, about getting rid of all the orange and green history and saying ‘Can we please, for the generations to come, move the f**k on?’

“Yeah, and that’s great. That’s how it should be. But there are still chippy people up there at it again. That’s why the whole integrated-education thing is so important. We can all work together.”

There is certainly a large part of the younger generation who don’t care about the old divisions. It’s a demographic you don’t hear enough about.

“It is getting on for 30 years,” Hinds says, looking back to the Belfast Agreement. “You need to move forward – for the future of people you purport to love and care for. If you can afford to, can you not just get out more and be more open-hearted? The Fleadh Cheoil is going to Belfast for the first time this year. I think that should be a great event for everybody.”

The young Hinds briefly studied law at Queen’s University Belfast before lunging towards the acting lark. I can see him as a barrister. He has the bearing. He has the voice. Does he ever consider an alternate path where he practised that profession?

“I don’t think I had it in me to be the lawyer type,” he says. “It’s more of an intellectual pursuit.”

He had enough raw talent to make it into Rada in London. That was an exciting place to be in the aftermath of the 1960s. But there is pressure too. I imagine competition between the hungriest young actors of the era.

“There were 21 students. And they did seven terms,” Hinds says. “Kevin McNally was there. He was the brilliant one of our generation. He gave a remarkable Falstaff at the age of 19. Wow! You knew he was very special.”

McNally, still with us and still busy, became an unavoidable character actor. But others fell away. The breaks weren’t there. They maybe realised they didn’t have what it took.

“I don’t know what it was in our time, but most of them gave up when nothing was happening and retired. But before us there were wonderful actors. Alan Rickman was there. After us, then it all started. You had Kenneth Branagh and Fiona Shaw and so on. I was gone by the mid-1970s.”

[ Liam Neeson: From Paisley-loving Catholic boy to actor, then action man, now comedy starOpens in new window ]

It is an oddly shaped career. You could reasonably argue that, for a decade or so, Hinds was an “actor’s actor”. That is to say he worked consistently but wasn’t hugely well known outside the profession. Like Liam Neeson and Gabriel Byrne, he got an early break in Excalibur, but that did not immediately lead to movie stardom.

“I was doing theatre in Dublin,” he says. “Jim Sheridan was running the Project Arts Centre there. Jim took me into the company, where I met the wonderful actors Peter Caffrey and Johnny Murphy. John Boorman was looking around for young actors to be in Excalibur. But then I went back to the theatre. I really didn’t do much television work until the 1990s, I guess.”

Liam Neeson and Ciarán Hinds at the premiere of There Will Be Blood in 2007 in New York City. Photograph: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

Did he ever look at how, say, Neeson surged after Excalibur and wish he too could be swanning about Hollywood?

“No, no. Liam is a great friend, and I always knew Liam had it in him,” he says, amiably. “He wanted to have a go at being a film star. I didn’t have that in my DNA.”

In the mid-1980s he toured the world in Peter Brook’s legendary production of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. It was there that he met his wife, the actor Hélène Patarot (who plays his character’s lover, Mina, in the RTÉ dramedy The Dry), and they have remained together ever since.

Does having another actor in the house help? Do they bounce ideas off one another?

“I sometimes help Hélène if she wants help with dialogue,” he says. “It just turned out that I worked more than Hélène.”

Hinds laughs his self-deprecatory laugh.

“It’s strange. The opportunities she has, she goes more for quality than quantity. I’m a bit more about quantity.”

Ciarán Hinds and his wife Hélène Patarot attending the 94th Annual Academy Awards in 2022.Photograph: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

I’m not sure that’s true. There were endless highlights throughout the 1990s. He was in the first production of Patrick Marber’s controversial Closer, at the National Theatre in London. He played Richard III at the Royal Shakespeare Company for Sam Mendes. It is often overlooked that he was hugely touching as Captain Wentworth in Roger Michell’s 1995 film of Persuasion – a first shot in the late-1990s Jane Austen revival – for the BBC.

“It was a beautiful thing to be involved with,” he says. “You realise, as you get older, it’s a tricky thing to take great pieces of literature and transfer them into another medium and give it the grace and the depth.”

As the decades progressed Hinds became an increasingly unavoidable face on film and television. He is in Game of Thrones, There Will Be Blood, Munich and (of course) a Harry Potter film.

I get no sense that the greater visibility has much changed him. His daughter, Aoife Hinds, is now a busy actor. He and Patarot share their life between Paris and London. I can understand that. Hinds is a man of international tastes, but the Belfast in him remains strong. How is his French?

“Well, I did it up to A-level,” he says. “Suddenly these words unlock themselves – with the aid of some red wine. Ha ha! The neighbours are always very kind to me. I have enough to get by and converse.”

That matters. He always has a great deal to say.

The Three Urns is in cinemas from Friday, April 17th

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Marlins At Mets: Bobby V And Mazzilli Enter The Mets Hall Of Fame On Saturday, With Beltrán To Follow In September

NEW YORK — The Miami Marlins (26-31) arrive at Citi Field on Friday for three games against the New York Mets (23-33) on the kind of weekend that gives a Mets fan in May reasons to look up. The franchise is inducting Lee Mazzilli and Bobby Valentine into its Hall of Fame on Saturday afternoon. Carlos Beltrán, the third member of this year’s class, will have his number 15 retired and his induction ceremony in September. The first 15,000 fans through the gates Friday get a Bobby Valentine Disguise giveaway — fake mustache, glasses, the entire 1999-era bit. Fireworks Night follows Friday’s game.

Both clubs walk into Citi Field still in the conversation. The Mets are 4.5 games out of the third National League Wild Card. The Marlins are five out. The dog days of summer have not arrived. There is a full month of June ahead, then the trade deadline, then everything that comes with it. For two teams that started slow in a division that has not yet produced a runaway leader, this weekend is the kind of stretch you bank wins from while the standings are still soft.

New York Mets’ Juan Soto flips his bat after hittin a two-run home run during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds Tuesday, May 26, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Friday: Meyer at Peralta

Max Meyer (5-0, 2.52 ERA) takes the ball Friday night at 7:10 p.m. ET for the Marlins. Meyer is the only undefeated starter in baseball with at least eight starts. He has 68 strikeouts in 60-plus innings and a sub-2.55 ERA. Meyer threw six sharp innings in Miami’s 12-0 win over the Atlanta Braves on May 18 and has not lost a decision in 2026. He is the kind of arm a club builds around.

Freddy Peralta (3-4, 3.52 ERA) takes the ball for the Mets. The 30-year-old Dominican right-hander pitched for the Dominican Republic at the 2026 World Baseball Classic and has 63 strikeouts across his 11 starts. He last faced these Marlins in Miami on Saturday and lost a 1-0 pitchers’ duel that could just as easily have gone the other way. He is one of the few healthy rotation pieces the Mets have and he has been pitching like it.

Saturday: Phillips at Scott — And A Hall Of Fame Ceremony

Tyler Phillips (0-0, 1.07 ERA) starts for the Marlins on Saturday at 4:10 p.m. ET, his second career start after being stretched out from the bullpen. Phillips threw five innings last Sunday at home, allowed one earned run, and helped complete a sweep of these same Mets. The story of Phillips this month is the story of a long-relief guy quietly playing his way into a rotation spot. Christian Scott (0-0, 3.20 ERA) starts for the Mets in what is essentially his sixth professional outing — a young right-hander with real stuff and the chance to introduce himself to a national broadcast slot.

Before the first pitch, on the field, the Mets will induct Mazzilli and Valentine into the team Hall of Fame. The first 15,000 fans through the gates receive a Mazzilli/Valentine players pin. Mazzilli is going to walk out to his old position with the entire Brooklyn-Italian section of the borough cheering. Valentine is going to walk out for the first time as a Mets Hall of Famer with the franchise’s modern playoff era — the one between Davey Johnson and Terry Collins — formally recognized at last.

Sunday: Junk at McLean

Janson Junk (3-5, 4.80 ERA) gets the ball for Miami on Sunday at 1:40 p.m. ET in the series finale. Junk last pitched Wednesday in Toronto in relief and is on three days of rest in a swing-starter role. Jonah McLean (2-4, 4.40 ERA), a 26-year-old Mets right-hander with 75 strikeouts on the season, gets the start opposite him. McLean has the highest strikeout-per-nine on the Mets’ active starting staff. Junk needs the kind of grind-it-out start that Marlins fans have seen him give before. The kind that puts a weekend in motion.

FILE – Former New York Mets’ Bobby Valentine, wearing a fake moustache, reacts as he is introduced during an Old-Timers’ Day ceremony before a baseball game between the Colorado Rockies and the Mets on Aug. 27, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger, File)

The Bobby V Weekend, And What It Means

Bobby Valentine spent seven years managing the Mets from 1996 to 2002. He took the team to consecutive postseasons for the first time in franchise history. He took them to the 2000 World Series, the only Mets manager to do so between 1986 and 2015. He left with the second-most wins of any manager in team history. But the reason this Hall of Fame induction is happening this weekend, on a Marlins-Mets weekend, is what Valentine did in the ten days between September 11, 2001 and the resumption of baseball in New York City on September 21.

Shea Stadium became a staging ground for first responders headed to Ground Zero. Valentine personally fed workers at his nearby restaurant. He organized players and staffers for relief efforts. He visited Ground Zero on multiple occasions. He helped establish Tuesday’s Children, a nonprofit created to support the more than 3,000 children who lost a parent in the attacks. That organization still operates today and continues to support families almost twenty-five years later. That is the work being honored on Saturday afternoon. The 536 wins are the resume. The decade of post-9/11 community work is the reason the room will be on its feet.

New York Yankees first base coach Lee Mazzilli, left, and New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine share a laugh before Game 1 of the World Series Saturday, Oct. 21, 2000, at New York’s Yankee Stadium. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

Valentine has also been a quiet ambassador for international baseball. He managed in Japan for the Chiba Lotte Marines, winning a Japan Series in 2005 and developing a generation of Japanese players who later came to MLB. He threw out a ceremonial first pitch at a 2013 World Baseball Classic game in Fukuoka. The Mets going into the World Baseball Classic era with an open-door philosophy — Steve Cohen has consistently encouraged Mets players to represent their countries when invited, from Soto and Peralta to Brazobán and Vientos — is a continuation of a posture Valentine helped author in the franchise twenty years before the WBC even existed.

Bobby Valentine, a former manager of Boston Red Sox, throws a ceremonial first pitch at the World Baseball Classic first round game between Japan and China in Fukuoka, Japan, Sunday, March 3, 2013. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Former New York Mets’ manager Bobby Valentine, left, talks with Italy’s head coach Mike Piazza, right, prior to the quarterfinal game between Italy and Japan at the World Baseball Classic (WBC) at Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan, Thursday, March 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Lee Mazzilli, The Brooklyn Mets Story

Lee Mazzilli was drafted by the Mets in 1973 out of Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn. He played ten years in Queens across two stints, was a 1979 All-Star, and hit the first home run by a Met in an All-Star Game that summer in Seattle. He is the kind of player every Brooklyn family of a certain generation tells stories about. He is also, importantly for World Baseball Network’s readership, the most prominent Italian-American figure in the modern Mets canon — a Brooklyn kid, an Italian last name on the back of a Mets jersey, drafted out of a New York City public high school. The bridge between borough and franchise that the team has tried to recreate in every generation since.

New York Mets outfielder Lee Mazzilli, manager Joe Torre Listen to coach Willie Mays talk outfield. Mays and Mazzilli are arrivals at camp to work on Mazzilli’s outfield problems on Feb. 21, 1978 in St. Petersburg, Florida. (AP Photo)

Mazzilli came back for the 1986 World Series team. In Game 6 against the Boston Red Sox, with the Mets one strike from elimination, Mazzilli came off the bench in the eighth inning, walked, and scored the tying run on a sacrifice fly by Gary Carter. He went 2-for-3 with two runs scored across Games 6 and 7. The man on third base when Bill Buckner’s error happened was a different teammate, but the one who scored the run that *brought the Mets within one* in that inning was Lee Mazzilli of Brooklyn.

New York Mets Lee Mazzilli reacts as he crosses home plate to score the Mets’ third run of the game on a sacrifice fly by Gary Carter against the Boston Red Sox in New York, Oct. 26, 1986. The Mets went on to win the sixth game of the World Series 6-5 in 10 innings. (AP Photo/Susan Ragan)

Carlos Beltrán, The Cooperstown Clock

Carlos Beltrán is the third inductee and the one whose Cooperstown timeline is most pressing. Beltrán was 70.3 percent on the BBWAA ballot in January — short of the 75 percent needed but tracking toward induction in 2027. He is currently a Special Assistant to Mets President of Baseball Operations David Stearns. The Manati, Puerto Rico native ranks in the Mets’ top ten in home runs, RBI, runs scored, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and OPS. In 2006, he finished second in the National League in bWAR with 8.2 as the Mets advanced to the NLCS.

Beltrán represented Puerto Rico at multiple World Baseball Classics. He was a leader on the 2013 Team Puerto Rico that nearly won the tournament, the squad that established Puerto Rico as one of the WBC’s most dangerous countries for the rest of the decade. He is the most decorated international player to wear a Mets uniform in the franchise’s six decades.

Puerto Rico’s Carlos Beltran, right, highs five with teammates before the start of the World Baseball Classic first round game against Spain in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Friday, March 8, 2013. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

Beltrán has remained close to the borough his whole career. In 2009, during a rehab assignment, he played a game with the Brooklyn Cyclones in front of fans who treated it like a major-league appearance.

New York Mets’ Carlos Beltran signs autographs while on a rehab assignment with the Class A Brooklyn Cyclones in a baseball game against the Hudson Valley Renegades at KeySpan Park in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2009. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)

In November 2019, he was introduced as the Mets’ manager — a job he never got to start, but a moment that signaled where the franchise was placing him in its long-term plans. He has been an organizational fixture in some form ever since. His number 15 will be retired in a September ceremony at Citi Field that will also serve as his formal Mets Hall of Fame induction.

FILE – New York Mets’ Carlos Beltran smiles during an introductory baseball news conference in New York, Nov. 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

Three players. Three different threads. One weekend that the franchise, and its fans, get to celebrate together.

The Soto Heater

Juan Soto is on a heater. He hit his 12th home run of the season on Wednesday off Cincinnati’s Andrew Abbott. Six of his last eight hits have been home runs. He has eight home runs in his last 12 games. Only eight National League hitters have more home runs than Soto on the season, and all of them have played in at least nine more games than he has — he missed two and a half weeks in April with a right calf injury. He is hitting .301 / .392 / .594 with a .986 OPS that would lead the National League if he had enough at-bats to qualify.

In his words, he is “trying to do damage.” That has been the Mets offense for the last three weeks. Soto has accounted for nearly half of New York’s RBIs over their last eight games. The reinforcements are coming. Jared Young (Canada) was just activated off the 10-day IL. A.J. Minter is back from the 60-day. Jorge Polanco (Dominican Republic) is on a rehab assignment at Binghamton and could be back next week. Eric Wagaman homered Wednesday after being selected from Syracuse. The shape of the lineup the Marlins are facing this weekend is different from the one they swept eight days ago.

The Marlins Coming In

The Marlins enter Friday with several stories worth following. Otto Lopez (Panama, plays for Team Canada at the WBC) leads the team at .330 — a serviceable shortstop having his best month as a Major Leaguer. Xavier Edwards is hitting .306 with a .386 on-base percentage and the lowest strikeout rate of any starting infielder in the National League. Liam Hicks (Canada) has 11 home runs and 44 RBIs, still third in the National League. Owen Caissie (Canada) drove in both runs in Miami’s 2-1 win over this same Mets team last Friday. Esteury Ruiz (Dominican Republic) tripled in that one. Jakob Marsee (American-born, plays for Team Italy at the WBC) stole his 14th base of the season Tuesday in Toronto. Javier Sanoja (Venezuela) hit his first career grand slam against the Atlanta Braves on May 18. Joe Mack, the 23-year-old No. 4 organizational prospect, is in his rookie season behind the plate and has a pop time good enough that opposing dugouts have noticed.

Eleven Marlins were on 2026 World Baseball Classic rosters. Eury Pérez (Dominican Republic), Sandy Alcántara (Dominican Republic), Heriberto Hernández (Dominican Republic), Lopez, Hicks, Caissie, Ruiz, Marsee, Sanoja, plus two other names on the active roster represent six different countries.

The Mets You Are Seeing (And The Italian Thread)

The Mets carry their own international footprint. Soto (Dominican Republic). Luis Torrens (Venezuela) — likely catching multiple games this weekend. Huascar Brazobán (Dominican Republic) — Team DR alongside Peralta at the WBC. Vidal Bruján (Dominican Republic). Jonah Tong (Canada) — the 23-year-old rookie who threw three scoreless in Miami last Friday. Jonah McLean (Sunday’s starter) carries his own WBC reps. Mark Vientos (Miami-born, plays for Team Nicaragua at the WBC under Dusty Baker). Bo Bichette (West Palm Beach-born, announced he would play for Team Brazil at the WBC but withdrew before the tournament; his brother Dante Jr. played for Brazil in his place). Marcus Semien (Team USA WBC).

Steve Cohen’s posture on this has been clear from day one of his ownership: Mets players are allowed and encouraged to represent their countries at the WBC. That is how a franchise builds international depth in a sport where the talent pipeline has shifted decisively outside the United States over the last twenty years. The 2026 Mets roster has eight current contributors who wore a country’s colors at the tournament in March. That is the legacy Valentine helped author and Beltrán helped represent. World Baseball Network exists to track this.

The Italian thread runs through the building this weekend. Mazzilli is going into the Hall. Brett Baty is a Mets infielder with Italian heritage. Mark Vientos has roots in the same Italian-American baseball tradition that produced Mazzilli a generation ago. And across the diamond, Jakob Marsee (Team Italy at the 2026 WBC) is in center field for Miami. One Mets HOF inductee, one Mets infielder, one current Met from the same heritage line, and one Marlins outfielder repping Italy at the WBC — all in one ballpark on Saturday afternoon.

How To Watch

Friday May 29 · 7:10 PM ET · Meyer vs. Peralta · Marlins.TV · WPIX · Bobby Valentine Disguise (first 15,000) · Fireworks Night
Saturday May 30 · 4:10 PM ET · Phillips vs. Scott · Marlins.TV · SNY · Mets Hall of Fame Induction · Mazzilli/Valentine Players Pin (first 15,000)
Sunday May 31 · 1:40 PM ET · Junk vs. McLean · Marlins.TV · SNY
Radio: WQAM 104.3 (Miami) · WAQI 710 AM (Spanish) · Audacy Mets Radio WHSQ 880 AM (NY)
Streaming: MLB.TV · Fubo

The Stakes

The Marlins enter Friday three games ahead of the Mets in the NL East and five games out of the third National League Wild Card. Both clubs are still in the chase. The Mets need to take at least two of three to bank a series win going into June and a road trip through Colorado and Los Angeles. The Marlins, riding a stretch of solid baseball with Meyer pitching the way he is, want to keep stacking wins because every weekend they take from a rival is a weekend that strengthens the front office’s hand at the deadline.

Bobby V is back at Citi Field on Saturday. Beltrán is on the Cooperstown clock. Mazzilli is finally getting his moment. Soto is on a heater. Meyer is undefeated. Two teams still in the conversation in late May, playing three games in front of a fan base getting to celebrate its own history. That is what May 29-31 looks like in Queens.

First pitch Friday is 7:10. See you at the ballpark.

— MT

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Ric Flair alleges trademark infringement.

On social media, Ric Flair said that someone is using his “Flair” trademark. He warned the individual to clear this up by Monday, or else they’ll have to deal with his attorneys.

“Unfortunately, There Is Someone That I’m Very Familiar With Using My Own Trademark FLAIR. I Would Like Anyone Who Is Using My Trademarks- Which Are Impossible To Own And I Own Mine, To Know That I’m Well Represented By A Reputable $1000 Per Hour Attorney That Makes A Living Suing People That Abuse My Trademark. You Know Who I’m Talking About. I Hope You Can Clear This Up By Monday, And If We Can’t Resolve This Issue, Read The Penalties.”

Unfortunately, There Is Someone That I’m Very Familiar With Using My Own Trademark FLAIR. I Would Like Anyone Who Is Using My Trademarks- Which Are Impossible To Own And I Own Mine, To Know That I’m Well Represented By A Reputable $1000 Per Hour Attorney That Makes A Living Suing… pic.twitter.com/yVZJlCbYoY

— Ric Flair® (@RicFlairNatrBoy) May 29, 2026

In a follow-up to his previous post, Flair posted this:

“The Relationship Was Gone 9 Years Ago… I’m Sorry & Sad That It Has Come To This. I’ve Tried My Best To Fix Things Over The Years Only To Be Rejected Because Your Wife Runs Your Life.”

The Relationship Was Gone 9 Years Ago… I’m Sorry & Sad That It Has Come To This. I’ve Tried My Best To Fix Things Over The Years Only To Be Rejected Because Your Wife Runs Your Life. pic.twitter.com/xguEDt2R3L

— Ric Flair® (@RicFlairNatrBoy) May 29, 2026

David Fleir, Ric Flair’s son, appears to be a part of Green Flair Recycling according to his LinkedIn profile.

During a recent interview, Flair commented on the Los Angeles Lakers’ Luka Doncic missing the second round of the NBA playoffs. Fans can read his comments here.

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Backrooms Actor Avan Jogia Wants to Bring You Into His World

After two decades in the entertainment industry, Avan Jogia has definitely learned a thing or two.

Getting his start in Hollywood early on Nickelodeon’s Victorious and later the teen drama Twisted, it was a bit of a whirlwind getting spit out of the “kids’ television program machine,” as the 34-year-old actor describes it. Though it took some time, Jogia eventually realized he has full control “to navigate where I want this ship to go,” choosing roles and directing films that truly resonate with him.

“[After] 20 years of having been making stuff, I might be arriving at what my boundaries are,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It takes a long time, not just time elapsed, but inside yourself to be like, ‘Maybe I do deserve to decide how I want to make and what I want to make.’ And so I’ve arrived at that part of the play.”

Jogia’s now diving into projects that lean into world-building and allow characters to exist beyond “the very narrow window of human expression,” he says. That’s exactly why the Prime Video romantic psychological thriller 56 Days caught his attention and saw him star opposite Dove Cameron earlier this year. And it’s why he jumped at the opportunity to work with Kane Parsons on his Backrooms film, which released Friday.

Below, Jogia opens up about transitioning from kids’ television and into more mature roles and directing, what it was like working on Backrooms, the success of 56 Days, collaborating with his fiancée, Halsey, on their new movie and more.

Going to go back to the beginning, what made you initially want to pursue a career in entertainment?

I really liked the concept of being able to be seen as a professional and be taken seriously and also to be able to professionally play, which is what I do for a living. And so I started talking about it when I was like six. Once I understood what it was, my parents held off as best they could and I bugged them until I was like 12 and then they sort of were like, “OK, let’s go to this acting class and sort of like satisfy this thing.” And because of that, I got a lot of commercial work. … And then I started taking more narrative parts in Vancouver, Canada.

Then I dropped out of high school, which I recommend to no one. And I tell this story very rarely because of what I ended up doing, which was kids’ television. You end up being the sort of de facto ambassador and co-parent for every single person of an entire generation or two. And I dropped out of school and drove down to California and lived in a trailer behind someone’s house for $300 in the valley. And then I got the show called Victorious, which is this sort of cultural phenomenon.

We were kids who were a little bit more driven and so we were plucked out and put into this kids’ television program machine, and once it spits you out, as it did for me, it spit me out in my late teens, early ’20s. And I was fortunate enough to go onto the second intermediary step on the ladder, which is teen television. I was on the ABC Family (now Freeform) show called Twisted, which is a beloved cult show for many people because around the time it was one of those shows that was in that pack of Pretty Little Liars and all the other ones.

lazyload fallback — Denise Richards and Avan Jogia in ‘Twisted’ season one.

Everett Collection

Having got your start in acting, when did you know you wanted to transition into directing?

After that show [Twisted] was done, it was sort of my choice to navigate where I want this ship to go. And though that’s the year that I did the two Sundance films and I had the mini-series I did with Sir Ben Kingsley come out, Tut, it was this sort of like, OK, so this is approaching the reason why I came to the party in the first place. I love acting and I will continue to do acting my whole life. Then you get started in one thing and you realize the journey of life, and if you’re listening carefully and you’re not just accepting the first truth that you learnt, you can alter your life in the way that you want.

So I directed a film that I wrote. I wrote the film when I was actually 23, out of frustration that I really didn’t like the parts that were available, and so I wrote these parts for other people, the kind of parts that I wanted to do and I grew up wanting to be in. I like frenetic, energetic movies where characters get a real opportunity to be characters, to be extreme, to not exist in the very narrow window of human expression.

Backrooms is your newest project, and since audiences don’t technically see you on camera in the film, how did this role come about?

Kane’s [Parsons, director] so smart. I’ve liked him since he was 16 years old making his videos, and he got this opportunity and I was happy to be involved in anything to support his vision for what this thing is. I love the world building. That’s the kind of film that I wanted to be able to be in when I got out of the machinery of kids’ television and into my 20s.

Me and Kane, I don’t know what it was. We kept on talking. We talked way more than I think a part like this normally would merit, because he’s a world builder and I just love that stuff. So am I. And there’s no part of this film, when watching him work, that isn’t important to him. He’s got lore and he’s got myth and he’s got depth for every aspect of it and that’s how you make things that I like. We had many conversations and I think there was a bunch of different versions of how I was going to be in this, but he just was like, “You’re in it. I don’t know in what capacity.” And it was because I said to my agents and managers, “Whatever the capacity is, I’m a gamer. I want to play ball.”

It was recently announced that you’re going to be directing and co-writing the film Replacer with your fiancée, Halsey. How did the idea come about and how excited are you to be collaborating together?

One of the joys of my life is being able to live and collaborate with someone who I think is immensely talented in every medium that she’s exploring. And we work really well together. We have a similar writing sensibility, which made the writing process super easy, and I’m just excited to watch. Again, I want to watch actors have fun exploring something larger than themselves or larger than the everyday, the mundane and the rote. I want actors to come in and swing on a person and on a character. And watching her be able to do that, I mean, I wrote it with the attention that in your 20s, she was busy being wildly successful in a very, very hard field. So she didn’t have time to do movies like this. And so I was like, “You should have had one of these, so let me write it.”

That’s a pretty grand romantic gesture to be like, “Let me write a movie for you.”

Yeah, that should have been something that happened, but it didn’t because you took this different dimension jump, but there’s a dimension where you could have been doing this and doing this and doing this. And part of loving someone is also being able to see all the different versions of them that could have been or that might yet still be.

You mentioned that you were avoiding romantic lead roles at one point in your career, but then you just starred in 56 Days, which became a hit on Prime Video. What made you want to join this project, as well as what was your reaction to how it resonated with fans?

It’s a romantic lead, but there’s so much there. There’s meat on the bones. There’s something for me to perform. There’s a constant tension that’s there that I can do it really, really sweetly, or I can do it with the weight of all the internal stuff that Oliver’s going through. Also, not for nothing, it was quite a physical part because I had my shirt off all the time (Laughs), which, insert massive sigh about how it’s a lot of work. But that was something to do. I’d done a couple of those, but I hadn’t really done something like this.

And then of course it’s a number one show situation, which is amazing and I’m so humbled by that, and people have been really, really nice about it and kind. I don’t think anyone expects a show to be a cultural moment. I think you would have to be quite mad as a person to be like, “Oh yeah, No. 1.” But it’s always a nice thing. It ended up being sort of a choice for me because once you do a show like that, what happens subsequently is you get a million more opportunities to do that sort of thing and people are intimating that you should keep going on this train even if it takes you further from what you want to do. And because I’m oppositional defiant, I was like, “Let me go direct a movie.” (Laughs.)

Fans have also been fancasting you to potentially portray Xaden in the Fourth Wings Prime Video adaptation. I know your focus is on directing at the moment, but would you be open to doing that role if presented the opportunity?

Everything has something interesting to it, not for nothing. I’d love to do fantasy. When you’re a little boy and you’re growing up and you want to be an actor, you have a list in your mind of things that you would love to do. I saw The Lord of the Rings and was like, “I would love to be able to one day be included in fantasy.” And I grew up. I’ve played every large-scale fantasy video game that there is to play. I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours of my life living in a fantasy world. I would love to be able to be in a movie or a TV show that has fantasy elements to it. I would love to be a pirate. That’s what I’m saying when I say acting. What I got into this to do is to make myself as a child happy by playing in worlds that have always excited me since I was a kid. And so the concept of dragons and a fantasy world like that, that sounds awesome.

If you had to describe what makes Avan Jogia, Avan Jogia, what would you say?

I’m passionate. I’m curious. I love creative collaboration. In a world where there’s so little community, film set, the pirate ship, the us all go to sail and we find whatever this thing is out in the open ocean, that community of people that I get to work with every day, that is what I’m always looking for. That creative community of ideas where we’re all rolling up our sleeves and we all believe in a thing and we’re all doing it together is way more important than what the result ends up being. The result is a byproduct of the time spent with a community. … I’m someone who’s always made for the sake of making and then sometimes I lose my way. But I think [after] 20 years of having been making stuff, I might be arriving at what my boundaries are. Like I said earlier in the conversation, it takes a long time, not just time elapsed, but inside yourself to be like, “Maybe I do deserve to decide how I want to make and what I want to make.” And so I’ve arrived at that part of the play.

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