It is hard to push your own kids in that direction but it was good for me to step outside my neighbourhood, outside the cliches of the world I was born into.

I’m 50 and the older I get the more I try to not stay in my neighbourhood. I cycle and try different cafes.

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The urge to impress family

I’m the youngest and my brothers and sister were very smart. I was not academic, I could not organise my thoughts in exams.

My sister Clíodhna helped me with how to write an essay, how to read a poem and I had a great music teacher, Mr Smith, who allowed us to sing every day.

I learned to write through reading everything my brothers, sister and parents were reading, because I wanted to impress them.

Last night I went to a screening of (my latest TV show) Flora and Son and I realised out of the 200 people there I only wanted to please my sister.

Jim is nine years older, Kieran is seven and Clíodhna is four years older. When I was a kid, making my siblings laugh was just so important to me. The desire to entertain my family has stayed with me, it is what validates my work, and I don’t know why.

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Musical form

My mum loved music. She would play Frank Sinatra and Glen Campbell. Jim was into everything, experimental stuff.

Aged 13 my classmate Eamonn Griffin opened up a new world to me in his living room, where he had an amp. We set up a band and the character Eamonn in Once (2007) was based on him.

In the summer of 1990 I met Glen Hansard knocking around town. We had an immediate connection. He was from Killester, he liked my middle class foppish aura – or whatever it was I was pretending to be back then.

He was open to all types. I am constantly getting into conversations with strangers. I want to learn what is going on in different cultures.

Glen and myself put The Frames together in the summer of 1990. The week before I was to go back to school I sat my mum down at the end of my bed saying ‘I’m not going back, mum, I am not going to do my Leaving’. It was the best decision I ever made.

Statistically, staying on at school is the best thing to do, but I felt I was failing, I could not sit still.

I am a firm believer in letting people know there are a million different ways of living your life.

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Capturing pivotal moments

When I was 17 mum bought me a Mitsubishi camcorder and I started making comedy films for my friends.

I remember the manager of The Frames saying you won’t last, you clearly want to do something else.

I started collaborating with Tom Hall. We made November Afternoon and I realised then we would never make a living, we needed to make TV.

Tom was funny, my brother Kieran was funny and so we wrote the pilot for Bachelors Walk for RTÉ.

I was still living with my parents. I had met Marcella (my wife) in an earlier movie I wrote with Daniel James, On the Edge, and when RTÉ commissioned Bachelors Walk, Marcella was in it, and we rented a place together.

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The universal story

Every single Irish person who makes a living out of the arts is pinching themselves. Colin Farrell, Neil Jordan – everyone.

If my kid came to me saying they wanted to be a filmmaker I would see that tough struggle ahead.

Money is the most significant factor in any success – you cannot make a film without a backer. Without someone bankrolling you it does not matter how brilliant you are.

The film board had fallen apart but came back in 1996 and that’s how I was able to keep going. It was a massive support system.

In the arts we should all admit any success we have had is just the story of all the people we have met. If you don’t go to college, like I didn’t, those encounters are your lucky breaks.

I was lucky when I met Glen and Eammon and Marcella. Lucky when Jim Sheridan saw November Afternoon and asked me to write a script. Lucky RTÉ took a punt on us.

Today with the Apple deal for Flora and Son – that was the stars aligning for me, it’s not because I’m a genius.

You need good fortune to make a living in the arts but what is also true is the harder you work, the more truthful you are in your work, the better your good luck.

Take Eve Hewson. She worked so hard on Flora and Son, I’m not saying harder than a chambermaid, none of us do that. But she was committed to experiment, she was willing to risk making a fool of herself, she was not precious.

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Creativity

I’ve never drunk much alcohol. I have a glass of wine or a beer if we have someone over, that’s it.

I’ve always felt drinking is often the death of art. Guinness is the greatest excuse for not doing anything.

There are many talented musicians sitting in bars with great ideas but four Guinnesses later, the drink melts the drive.

I get up at 7.30am and walk my boy to school and have porridge in a local cafe. I read three articles, close the laptop. I keep it as if I am going to work, reading the news on my commute.

I open the script I’m working on and at 11am break for a coffee and go to my piano or guitar.

Maybe I heard a Billy Joel song on the radio and I want to break that down, how the chords changed. While playing I will be coming up with something musical to accompany a scene.

I find screen writing quite boring, fiddling around on the piano is how it comes.

I drink two cups of coffee, no more, and smoke one cigarette at the end of the evening. Religiously.

I eat pretty healthy – lots of raw veg and a smoked salmon bagel for lunch. Once a week I’ll go out for a dirty ham and cheese sandwich.

I will only do a couple more hours creative work in the afternoon. I go swimming in the pool or for a cycle and I’m thinking about the scenes I’m writing. Doing something physical gives me endorphins that help my work.

I enjoy sitting down with producers, writers, and musicians. I constantly send my stuff to others.

​There are meetings and emails and I have rules for myself for not looking at my phone when I’m with my kids, Aoife aged two and Lugh, six.

It’s important for me working from home not to break that connection.

I want to be clear with them; to be able to say I’m working right now, or I’m not working, yes, I can play with you now.