Opposite lives? Well, maybe not

There are roughly 3.7 zillion different routes to being an actor. At first glance, the stars of PBS’ new Alice & Jack” seem to have taken opposite ones.
For Domhnall Gleeson, 40, it looks quick and obvious. His dad, Brendan Gleeson, is a prominent actor, complete with an Oscar nomination (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), five Golden Globe nominations and a Harry Potter role, as Mad-Eye Moody.
And Andrea Riseborough, 42? Her parents were a car salesman and a secretary.
Now they trace 15 years of a sometimes-romance, in a six-parter that debuts at 10 p.m. Sunday (March 17), after the season-opener of “Call the Midwife” and the start of Helena Bonham Carter’s “Nolly.” But their careers aren’t as opposite as they seem.
Gleeson didn’t see a slick path to stardom. His dad “was a teacher until he was 34 and was acting in plays in Dublin until I was almost into my teens,” he told the Television Critics Association.
Until the movie roles started, it was a tough ride. “I remember him in his room writing ….He was trying to write something to get it on in a theater. He worked incredibly hard, even when he wasn’t being hired.”
And for Riseborough, show-business wasn’t that distant.
Her dad, she said, is “a great old-Hollywood cinephile and has loved film his whole life.” His mother (Andrea’s grandmother) sold movie tickets during World War II and he would come along; “he used to fall asleep” to movies.
And Riseborough’s mom? “When she was 50, (she) decided to get a master’s in Shakespeare and Jacobean studies.”
Both were pleased when Andrea had her moment, at 9. People doing a play needed a young actress and “they had heard that I could string a sentence together.”
She got the role and kept going, from children’s roles to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and on toward her best-actress Oscar nomination in “To Leslie” (2022), a movie few people saw and many actors admired.
By comparison, Gleeson was a slow-starter. “I didn’t want to (act) until I was 19,” he said. “I wanted to write and direct and stuff.”
But then he saw auditions for a play (“The Lieutenant of Inishmore”), with a role he couldn’t resist. He got it and eventually did it on Broadway.
Now he plays a shy chemist, overwhelmed on a first date with a high-energy executive.
“She is a rolling set of fascinations and surprises,” said screenwriter Victor Levin, who said he based it on people he’s known well. “And unlike anyone he’s ever met.”
Levin is an American, but said he wrote it with these British actors in mind. He set it in New York, but then it was moved to England … before returning (via PBS) to the U.S.