'I’ve never felt intimidated on set but this I find nerve-racking' - actor Brian Mulvey ready for Corinthian Challenge

Undergoing a transformation is part of the craft for actor Brian Mulvey, who will step into one of his most difficult roles to date as that of a jockey in Sunday's Corinthian Challenge.

At 6ft 3in and 47 years of age, the Dublin native has had to reach Daniel Day-Lewis levels of method discipline in order to make the 12st weight for the charity race at the Curragh, where he will take on 12 other civilian riders in aid of the Irish Injured Jockeys Fund.

"I’ll be going in for headshots next week with my new, lean look to see if I can pick up anything," laughs Mulvey. "Not just the furry big guy any more."

Such has been the visible progress on that score that it has aroused the interest of even racing professionals. 

"I was talking to Camilla Sharples, who was Gordon Elliott's travelling head groom, she asked how much weight I’d lost and how I’d done it so quickly," he says. "I just did the motion for zipping my lips. She said, 'You’re not going to tell me', but I meant that I’d just stopped eating!

"I'd have a shake in the afternoon and eat a turkey burger in the evening with some veg. That’s been it for the last month and a half anyway. My wife tells me I’m like an antichrist without food, gone from 5.30 in the morning. It’s quite intensive but it’s getting to the fun stage now."

Mulvey, whose past credits include the film I.T. with Pierce Brosnan and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them from the Harry Potter catalogue, grew up near Leopardstown races and had a childhood dream of emulating his sporting heroes, such as Steve Cauthen, Pat Eddery and Lester Piggott. When he left school, he worked for Tommy Stack and Martin Lynch.

"I just got too big but, to be honest, I wasn’t good enough," he says modestly.

After spending a few more years around horses, his career change came about by chance.

"I’ve always had the ambition to be a jockey but I never had an ambition to be an actor, I kind of fell into it," he explains. "I love film and had a few friends who were making shorts. I ended up in front of the camera just to help them out. 

"An agent picked it up and asked me to do some auditions; it went on from there. I enjoy it but I’ve never stood on the stage or done theatrical acting. I always make the comparison with Flat and jump racing; the same sport but completely different. I honed as much as I think of my talent, which I wouldn’t say is vast or great, to performance for the camera and screen acting."

Riders in the Corinthian Challenge come from a range of backgrounds and this year include Garda member Stephanie Carter, Naas racecourse marketing manager Niamh Byrne, and Joanne Quirke, wife of jockey Gary Carroll. 

Also riding is Megan O'Leary, daughter of Lynn Lodge Stud's Eddie and Wendy, and currently on the Godolphin Flying Start scheme. 

They must prove themselves competent in horsemanship at the Racing Academy & Centre of Education and source their own mount.

Mulvey's link with the Chris Timmons-trained Chicago Storm emerged from a connection with his profession.

He says: "Chris is a young guy in County Meath and his partner, Joanne, is the niece of trainer Sheila Lavery. Joanne's brother, Mark, is an actor.

"We were in an Apple TV sci-fi show together, we met doing that down in Fuerteventura and became great pals. Mark's not that big into racing but he was telling us about his aunt and when this came up we thought it would be a great link between acting and racing if Chris had a horse for me. They said they had the perfect one, so it was a good segue.

"Chicago Storm is a big guy, 17 hands, so he won’t make me look like a monster either. We did a piece of work together last week and went down to the beach. Hopefully we both stay sound until the race. It’s been a horrific summer but I’d say he might enjoy a bit of juice in the ground."

Mulvey had been quietly renewing his equestrian interest in recent years, as he has an ex-racehorse and a Mount Nelson mare to hack on the roads and tracks near home. He emphasises his gratitude to those in the Timmons yard for allowing him to do "all the fun stuff" such as riding work, which he might not have been entrusted to do in a larger stable.

"Riding my mare kind of reignited it, it got me keen to ride out in a few places," he says. "Obviously after your early 20s you find pints, pizza, I would have ballooned up to 16 and a half, 17 stone. Doing this, my centre of gravity is resetting back to when I was 18.

"I’m finding all my balance back now and it’s a wonderful feeling. I had doubts and I’m now just really really enjoying it."

He feels quite a personal connection to the Irish Injured Jockeys' Fund through the old friends from his stable days who, ironically, he remembers would prefer not to acknowledge its existence because that would portend the need to use it. Mulvey has been led on his own journey of introspection after his young son, Kit, was diagnosed with autism, a discovery which led to he himself being found to have a similar neurodivergent profile.

"I can’t articulate how good the team at the Injured Jockeys' Fund staff, Michael Higgins, Alisha McCormack and Nicole Murtagh, are," he says. "They work so hard and they really care. They all really do a great job there; nutritionists, physiotherapists and the mental health people, that's I think the biggest thing at the moment for young jockeys, they need all that support. 

"It must be so much more difficult now as a jockey, in terms of mentally, not just the breaks but the resilience to deal with losing rides. It’s very like acting, you come very close to some big jobs and you realise that maybe a colleague or a friend gets it."

It is impossible to resist asking Mulvey if there is a particular jockey whose life story would intrigue him as an actor.

"There’s no-one I could really play with my height," he jokes, thinking aloud. "Richard Dunwoody, he was a genius but his psyche, my god. If I have an idea in my head about style, I'd be thinking of a mixture of Richard Dunwoody and Lester.

"The obsession makes him such an interesting character. He had that neck injury in 1998 and the following year the top medical professionals told him any further falls could cause serious harm. The way he dealt with it, he just cut himself off from racing. That was it, he was gone, he’d left town. I don’t think psychologically he could deal with not being that jockey, that’s what I find fascinating."

Currently seen as Trygg in a couple of episodes of the new series of Netflix show Vikings: Valhalla, the affable and distinctly non-showbiz Mulvey has been in the hunt for some quite good gigs on the small screen. He apologises profusely for not revealing one he is waiting on, as it is tangled in non-disclosure agreements.

Sunday's race, though, with a minibus of friends and family coming to watch, is an assignment quite apart.

"I’ve never been nervous on a job, walking on a set, even meeting people who would be considered stars," he says. "I've never felt intimidated. But this I find nerve-racking."

The silver lining of this year's Corinthian Challenge, which has been changed from a series to a single race, is that once Mulvey has passed the line, his spartan diet is also over.

"There's a brilliant little pub near Leopardstown that overlooks the city, The Blue Light, where they do the best beef nachos and on Sunday I'm going in there," he says. 

"I'll have maybe a pint and a half of Guinness, fall over with the weakness, and try to get two bowls of them into me."

You can visit Mulvey's Enthuse fundraising page here or via the corinthianchallenge.com website.

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