MARTY Maguire is a familiar face on stage and screen. In recent months the West Belfast man has appeared in the movie Kneecap and the Disney+ series Say Nothing and is currently starring in A Christmas Carol at The Lyric. His journey on the road to acting began some 40 years ago when he was in Sixth Year at La Salle in Andersonstown when he landed the role of Danny Zuko in the school’s Christmas production of Grease. That was 1982. He thought it would be a one-off, but it unintentionally set in motion a series of events that would lead to a successful acting career. “I had no notion of doing Grease, but I remember Seán O’Doherty, who was the English teacher and who produced the school shows, pointing at the Grease LP and pointing at me, and I’m thinking to myself, what’s he on about? A long story short, I got the part of Danny Zuko and I’ve been getting slegged about it ever since – even though it’s over 40 years ago. It’s been brilliant though. Some of the young lads who were in the chorus still come up to me now and say, you don’t remember me, but I was in Grease.” Marty says a couple of years later his dreams of becoming a social worker came to an abrupt end when “Jordanstown decided to part company with me”. “I was working in Top Man at the time and then an invite came through our letter box in early 1985 and it was for open auditions to the Ulster Youth Theatre’s production of Grease at the Opera House and I said, 'where did this come from? I never submitted myself for this'.
