Walking the red carpet at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York earlier this year, John Connors looked every inch the movie star.
The Irish actor, writer and director, who was there for Jim Sheridan’s flick Re-Creation, appeared leaner, sharper and more comfortable in his skin than previous outings. Yes, he’s had a glow-up of sorts, he laughs. He feels like a new man.
For a start, fasting and a carnivore diet are helping to keep him focused and trim. But more importantly, he says he is finally at peace, something that managed to elude him his whole life, until now.
He puts this down to the reignition of his strong Catholic faith. Returning to the prayers and the sacraments of his childhood following the death of his mum Kathleen, in August 2023, provided not just a source of comfort but stopped him from going down the dark path of self-destruction which he was already on.
‘I understand how this sounds to people who don’t share my thinking, but I found God a year ago, I found Jesus and surrendered to him,’ says John, who grew up in Darndale, Dublin. ‘I started partaking in a sacramental life and going back to Church. When I did that, everything changed for me, including the problem I’d had for many years which was gluttony.
King of the Travellers actor John Connors shows off his new, trim look
Love/Hate actor John Connors is pictured with mother of three Joan Moore in Dublin. Connors had saved Joan from a violent mugging
‘In a past life, I was a boxer and in really good shape but once I quit that, I gained massive weight and I had problems with gluttony for 15 years. So when I found God, I prayed the rosary every day for a week and fasted and asked for temperance, the opposite of gluttony, and I got it really.
‘Practically, I adopted a fasting and carnivore lifestyle. I couldn’t do that in the past as I didn’t have the discipline when I gave up boxing. I was in a bad state last year, suffering from grief after losing my mother, but once I surrendered to Jesus, there was a dramatic turnaround. Everything started happening for me.’
As he began to feel lighter emotionally, he noticed the pounds dropping off too.
He doesn’t know how much weight he’s lost as he hasn’t weighed himself, but he says he feels better than ever before.
The shedding of his emotional baggage also sparked a chain of events. He found love with Belfast actress Danielle Magennis, who stars in drama Say Nothing on Channel 4, and work offers started pouring in.
But it could have been a very different outcome for the star of Love/Hate and Cardboard Gangsters.
‘My mother dying two years was the catalyst – grief tears you apart,’ explains John. ‘I was looking everywhere for answers, and it was right in front of me all the time – Jesus.
‘That’s my life now. For the past couple of years, I’ve been praying and going to Mass but particularly over the last year, my faith has been really strong.
‘I was going down the path of self-destructive behaviour, the usual after grieving or if you’re dealing with poor mental health.
John and fiancee Danielle are planning a move north of the border next year when the pair tie the knot.
Danielle Magennis and John Connors hosting a Reclaim the Faith podcast
‘My mum was from the Glen Road in Belfast, she lived there for the first ten years of her life,’ says John, who has recently returned from the city where he was performing his self-penned, one-man show, Ireland’s Call.
‘Danielle is from the Falls Road,’ he says. ‘I’ve always had great welcomes there, I’ve never had one bad experience in that place, hence why I’m moving there.
‘The play went down well in Belfast. The audience was one of the best I’ve ever had, along with Ballymun and Tallaght. They’re all similar working-class areas who get the humour and the themes of intergenerational trauma, addiction, mental health. They’re three audiences I’ll never forget.’
Ireland’s Call follows the lives of three young men as they grow up in Coolock on Dublin’s northside and questions what entices them to a life of crime. John began touring it seven years ago, bringing it to New York, Paris, Sydney and Melbourne. Then Covid hit and he set it aside, before resurrecting it again for some key Irish dates.
As we chat, John – who is a Traveller and often champions his community through his work – is preparing to stage Ireland’s Call in Portlaoise for the final time.
He says he’s delighted that he can add playwright to his CV, alongside actor, screenwriter and filmmaker.
Having appeared in movies such as King Of The Travellers, The Secret Scripture and A Bend In The River, John was back on the big screen in the 2025 mystery thriller Re-Creation, directed by Jim Sheridan and David Merriman.
The film is about a jury deliberation of the murder case of French filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier and John played one of the jurors.
Other recent screen credits include Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series The Gentlemen, and a lead role in Crazy Love, which won him the Seymour Cassel Award for Outstanding Performance at the Oldenburg International Film Festival.
John’s latest project sees the 35-year-old in a cameo in the Irish comedy drama Horseshoe. Set in the west of Ireland, the beautifully shot flick marks the feature debut from Adam O’Keefe and Edwin Mullane, the latter who produced John’s play first time round.
The story centres on the four estranged Canavan siblings who return home to the west following the death of their father. As they attempt to navigate grief, long buried grudges and inheritance, they are forced to face each other and their fragile family bonds, while the ghost of their obstreperous, belittling dad Colm (Lalor Roddy) hangs around.
John plays Cormac Doherty, the solicitor who acts as the executor of the will for the recently deceased man.
What ensues is back and forth familial banter, simmering tensions and dark humour, all shot against the stunning backdrop of Sligo.
‘My role is a really fun cameo in the midst of loads of madness and complexities of an Irish family going through grief,’ says John.
‘My character gets directly involved in the centre of the conflict and appears in one of the bigger scenes in the film, in terms of length and the heavy lifting it does in terms of the plot.
‘As actors, we all like passing the ball and we all passed the ball to each other a lot in this scene. We got to do a bit of improvisation too, which was great.
‘It’s an age-old Irish tale, that story of grief and using humour to shine a light into the darkness. That’s the kind of stuff I love watching and what Horseshoe really nails is that old Irish essence of let’s laugh into the darkness and give people a warm, fuzzy film.’
He doesn’t know how much weight he’s lost as he hasn’t weighed himself, but he says he feels better than ever before
Horseshoe, which stars Carolyn Bracken, Jed Murray, Neill Fleming and Eric O’Brien as the Canavan siblings, has already garnered positive reviews across the board, with praise heaped on the script, cinematography and strong performances.
‘Everyone is brilliant in the cast,’ says John. ‘I really hope people go and see it because actually what they’ll be going to see is their own family up there on the screen, which is very rare.’
Born in London to an Irish Traveller family, John moved to Dublin with his family as a baby. His father struggled with his mental health and died by suicide when John was just eight years old.
The youngster took up boxing and went on to become a threetime Irish champion.
He was later encouraged to take up acting to help with his own mental health and found that he had a natural gift for pretending to be someone else. One of his best-known roles was that of Patrick Ward in the hit RTÉ crime drama Love/Hate, which aired between 2010 and 2014.
John sparked rumours that the iconic series was coming back when he appeared on Virgin Media’s Six O’Clock Show earlier this year and said it was going into production for a 2026 airing.
Both he and RTÉ later clarified that this wasn’t the case, with John stating that he was working on a different project that would mark the return of Ward. Not surprisingly, he has little to say on the matter.
‘Love/Hate is the thing I get asked about the most in every interview I do,’ he laughs. ‘I’ve nothing more to say about it.’ Noted.
The award-winning actor and director, who won IFTAs for Cardboard Gangsters and his documentary series John Connors: The Travellers, is on an upwards trajectory and enjoying life. He says it’s not perfect but that he is no longer driven by his wants nor is he searching for answers in all the wrong places.
He’d always held on to a sliver of faith, a throwback to his Catholic upbringing, but his epiphany came after he randomly popped into a church and was persuaded to attend confession.
‘All I can say is that afterwards, I felt like a different person,’ he says. ‘I was on this journey already, but it wasn’t until I surrendered completely to Jesus that everything fell into place.’
He admits he does face cynicism and opposition but says he’s prepared for the resistance.
Being sneered at for his views is part of being a Christian or Catholic, he says, adding that his message is one of peace and love. He finds it somewhat amusing that in his industry, he’s considered ‘crazy’ by some.
‘When I was destroying myself searching for all the bad things, they thought I was sane, so I’d prefer to be crazy, if it’s doing me the good that it’s doing me,’ he says.
‘Being crazy for Christ, well, I can’t think of anything better. I’m not meeting people, acting holier than thou or Bible bashing at them. I’m going to meet them where they are at and genuinely try and make a connection.
‘The main thing is, if you lead by example and live a good life, people will see that and come too. That will do a lot more than evangelising through words. Evangelising through action is far more powerful.’
The actor says it saddens him to see Ireland so secular and believes that the world in general is lacking in faith, prompting people to turn to other sources for ‘temporary solace’. He says what got Irish people though dark times before was faith and that the scandals within the Church, though ‘horrific’, won’t deter him from practising his.
‘In the last 20 or 30 years, because of Church scandals, we’ve thrown our faith down the drain,’ he says. ‘The Church scandals were horrific and terrible, and I think everyone knows someone who was affected. I certainly was affected in my family.
‘But that doesn’t stop me going to Church.
‘Jesus didn’t say that the Church wouldn’t have problems or that it wouldn’t be infiltrated by evil, but he did say evil will not prevail against the Church.
‘The secular world will tell you to go therapy, to exercise, to eat healthily. They’re all great sticking plasters, but none of them will heal you.’
John will next be seen in the film Lost City, directed by Belfast man Seán Murray, Lemonade, starring Barry Keoghan, and Once Upon A Time In Hell’s Kitchen, set in New York and based on the novel by Colin Broderick. He believes that the world is currently witnessing a huge wave of Irish talent who have adapted from stage to screen and that this tidal wave is only going to get bigger.
‘Ireland as a cultural brand is massive and there are many reasons for that,’ he says. ‘Innately, the Irish are storytellers but they’re good people too and they stand up for what’s right. People around the world know that. And sure, we love to have the craic.’
As Christmas approaches, John is reflecting on a positive year and looking ahead to a busy 2026, with a wedding, move and work opportunities on his hands. But he says he’s happier now than ever.
‘It’s more than being happy,’ he explains. ‘It’s so much deeper than that. I’ve found peace. I never had that my whole life, but I have it now.’