Born into fame, Bono’s actress daughter Eve Hewson could soon have more of her own

NEW YORK – Eve Hewson keeps getting discovered.

The Irish actress, whose credits date back to 2008, started generating heat in 2014 for her performance as a reserved young nurse in Steven Soderbergh’s period drama The Knick.

Her turn as the eerie, emotionally unstable wife in the Netflix miniseries Behind Her Eyes (2021) had fans stopping her on the street.

It happened again with Bad Sisters, the darkly comic Irish drama. Released in 2022 on Apple TV+, the show became a phenomenon in Dublin, Hewson’s home town, where weekly watch parties in pubs turned her into a local sensation.

And in 2023, she was the talk of Sundance, when the film Flora And Son, where she plays the titular role, sold for a record-breaking US$20 million (S$26 million) to Apple TV+.

Yet, partly because streaming services have dramatically increased the volume of television while atomising viewing habits, Hewson, 33, is not quite a household name.

That may change in the coming months. The actress is starring opposite Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber in the buzzy Netflix adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s 2018 book The Perfect Couple, which premiered on Sept 5. Hewson will be back for the second season of Bad Sisters on Nov 13, reprising her role as the youngest and wildest sister, Becka Garvey.

She just finished filming a part in Noah Baumbach’s new movie, which stars George Clooney and Adam Sandler, and is about to start a television pilot from director Alec Berg (Barry, 2018 to 2023) set in the world of Formula One racing.

Hewson has long had a complicated relationship with fame – understandable, given that her father is Bono, global activist and the frontman of Irish rock group U2. It is easy to feel invisible when your dad is gobbling up all the attention.

Routinely deemed a “nepo baby” before the phrase was in vogue, Hewson has long since given up on defending where she came from as the reason for her success.

She knows that having a famous father certainly helped. Her first acting gig came from a tutor she had while on the road with U2, an aspiring film-maker who cast her in a short. She loved the experience and never looked back.

Hewson said she never worried about how she would be perceived, going into a business that would – if she were successful – bring her fame and attention.

Genuinely funny in conversation, Hewson displays a relatability that belies her self-described upbringing “among rock stars and supermodels”. As a child, she constantly questioned whether people were her friends because they liked her or because they liked her father. (Or because they liked her swimming pool which, in Dublin, is almost as exotic as rock stars.)

But one upside of such uncertainty is a stronger sense of self.

“I don’t really believe in other people’s opinions,” said Hewson, dressed in a black silk skirt and black T-shirt with “Every woman has a fantasy” emblazoned on the chest. “Obviously, it affects me, but I’ve learnt to trust myself and trust my gut and trust my taste.”

Still, she said that unlike some of her experiences growing up, she is able to take in and appreciate others’ appraisals of her acting without questioning their motives. The thing that feels the most real to her is pretending to be someone else.

“When people come up to me and say, ‘You’re the crazy wife from that show on Netflix’, I’m like, ‘Oh, you’re actually recognising me and my work,’” she said. “They probably have no idea of the connection or don’t even care. It’s a nice feeling.”

In The Perfect Couple, Hewson plays Amelia Sacks, a down-to-earth Central Park zookeeper who is about to marry into a wealthy Nantucket family ruled by a matriarch named Greer Garrison Winbury (Kidman), a best-selling author obsessed with maintaining her family’s pristine image.

A death on the eve of the wedding threatens to disrupt the facade.

Hewson’s character is a kind of audience surrogate, there to be alternately fascinated and horrified by the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Privileged eccentricities are familiar to Hewson – what was demanding was grappling with the overwhelming grief her character faces in the series. Even amid an ensemble cast that also features Dakota Fanning and Jack Reynor, Hewson’s role as the outsider was isolating, especially since her character feels far bigger emotions than anyone else.

“I luckily haven’t fully experienced a death that’s so close to me,” she said. “It was hard for me to wrap my head around what that would feel like. Am I in denial? Am I completely engulfed in grief? I felt like my character had a lot of weight to it, and was the emotional beat of the story. That was the most challenging.”

She also had to go toe to toe with Kidman, whose character considers Hewson’s Amelia to be beneath her son and a threat to the family.

“Eve holds her own,” said award-winning Danish film-maker Susanne Bier, director of the six-episode series. “It’s not even difficult for her.”

Bier added that she cast Hewson because she wanted her “normal” protagonist to be played by “a complex human being who had secrets”.

“You look at her face; you look at her eyes,” Bier said. “You know that she does show you part of what she’s thinking, but not all of it.”

Hewson felt far more vulnerable playing Becka in Bad Sisters, who she said is the closest of any character she has played to her own personality. But she had to work for the part.

The show’s creator, Sharon Horgan, said Apple executives asked for another audition because they were not sure the actress could do comedy.

While playing Becka did involve recalling distinct, and often unpleasant, emotions from her childhood – feeling like a mess, feeling misunderstood – one thing she was confident about showcasing was her comic ability.

Hewson discovered that talent when, at 25, she starred opposite Andie MacDowell in the small romantic comedy Paper Year (2018), written and directed by Rebecca Addelman.

“I was like, oh, yeah, I’m good at this,” Hewson said. “I should do more of this.”

Horgan said: “She can kind of do anything. She can break your heart and make you laugh.” NYTIMES