PETER O'TOOLE TRIED TO
PULL MY PREGNANT GIRL

Sunday Mirror, 05-06-2001

by EAMONN O'HANLON

ONE of Ireland's hottest young actors has teamed up with Peter O'Toole in a new movie - only for the legendary womaniser to try to pull his girlfriend.

Aiden Gillen, 32, admits he was awe-struck when he was offered the chance to appear alongside Lawrence of Arabia star O'Toole in a Hollywood movie, set in the cut-throat world of American TV.

But no sooner had 68-year-old O'Toole arrived on the set of the movie, The Final Curtain, than he started working his charms on Dublin-born Aiden's girlfriend.

Aiden - best known as homo-sexual Stuart in Channel 4's Queer As Folk - said: ''It was a privilege to work with Peter. My girlfriend found him quite sexy and she didn't really know his film work. She'd never seen Lawrence of Arabia or his other films.

''She was pregnant at the time - and there he was flirting with her, running his fingers through her hair. It's not something everyone can get away with, but he was so gentle, so charming.''

The movie - due to be released later this year in Ireland - tells of two scheming English TV hosts vying to get picked up by an American network.

It is Iris h-born O'Toole's first big movie outing since his Oscar- nominated role in the Stunt Man .. and also a step up for Aiden.

He left Ireland in his 20s and was immediately signed up by a London theatrical agent, despite his lack of any formal training.

Aiden was quickly snapped up to play Stuart in Queer As Folk after a spell working in theatre in London before moving to Hollywood.

Speaking from LA where he is promoting the US release of another new movie, The Low Down, dad-of-two Aiden admits Queer As Folk was one of the biggest challenges of his career.

''It was an opportunity I could not pass up," he said.

Aiden has also been working with Richard Harris - one of O'Toole's old drinking pals - in a modern film version of ShakespearE's King Lear.

Although he doesn't enjoy being away from his three-year-old daughter and his six-month-old son, Aiden said: "Work should be fun - but only if you have to do it."

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