Brendan Kelly looks every inch the Hollywood heavy. The towering Irishman built a career playing bodyguards, prison guards, bikers and menacing tough guys opposite some of the biggest names in film. But spend an hour talking to him and another picture emerges: a storyteller shaped not by Hollywood, but by his parents, by boxing, by helping vulnerable children, and by an unshakeable belief that kindness is strength.
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“I fit the Johnny Bravo jacket,” he says. “I was typecast.”
That typecasting led to roles in The Rock, Con Air, Cellular, Oz, Den of Thieves and Angel Has Fallen. One director recommended him to another until the offers seemed endless. “I met Michael Bay, ‘I want you to be in The Rock.’ I met Simon West, ‘I want you to be in Con Air.’ They just started throwing me in.”
Yet at the height of that success, he walked away. “I started having kids. I wanted to be around. I didn’t want to be on a movie set. I wanted to be with my kids.”
Now living in Orlando with his family nearby, Kelly has little interest in chasing the next role. “I’m tired. I’m old. I’m sixty. I’ve done a lot of stuff. I’d rather stay at home.” What shines through is that fame was never the point.
Much of Brendan’s philosophy comes from his parents. His father delivered life lessons that have never left him, while his mother had an extraordinary gift for diffusing conflict. He recalls preparing for a childhood fight armed with a plank studded with nails while the other boy swung a bicycle chain.
His mother simply leaned over the fence and called out: “Remember boys, kill each other with kindness.”
The weapons were dropped. “You just made the baby Jesus smile,” she added.
“We couldn’t even look at each other after that,” Brendan says. “She completely defused the situation.”
His father taught him something equally powerful after he and his brothers mocked a poorly dressed boy called Ronnie.
“He may be dirty on the outside, but you’re all dirty on the inside.”
Kelly says they never made fun of Ronnie again. “That was a life lesson.”
Volunteering
Those lessons later shaped what Brendan describes as the greatest job he ever had. After a spell working with law enforcement, he took over a Police Activities League programme helping at-risk children in California.
“It was the greatest job I ever had.”
He speaks far more passionately about those children than any film set. There was Victor, the gang-influenced teenager who had never celebrated a birthday. When Brendan and the other children surprised him with a cake on his fourteenth birthday and sang Happy Birthday, the tough youngster burst into tears.
“I never had a birthday before, Coach.”
“I’m sorry, Victor.”
“That’s okay, Coach. I’m having one today.”
Years later another young man recognised him in a supermarket. The boy had once disappeared on Christmas Eve after taking drugs. Brendan had spent the entire night searching until he found him and brought him home. The young man simply smiled and said:
“I never got a chance to thank you.”
For Kelly, those moments mattered more than any acting credit. “You only hope they’ll play that forward.”
Author
His newest chapter is as an author. His novel Occupation Gangster grew out of conversations he had decades ago with Jimmy Coonan, the infamous Westies leader in New York.
This novel has stayed with him for almost four decades. Inspired by his encounters with Jimmy Coonan, while working as a Manhattan doorman in the 1980s, Kelly draws readers into the brutal world of Hell’s Kitchen at the height of the gang’s power. Rather than glorifying violence, he set out to understand the men behind it and tell their story with honesty.
“It took me forty years to write this book,” he says.
He describes it not as an endorsement of organised crime but as an attempt to understand the people behind it.
“They got dealt the cards they got dealt, and they handled it the way they saw fit. I told the story my way.”
The book is dedicated to his late brother Ciaran, who read stories aloud to Brendan when childhood learning difficulties made reading almost impossible.
“My brother always read to me, that’s who I dedicate this book to.”
For all the stories of boxing, Hollywood and gangsters, Kelly returns again and again to one simple idea.
“Do the best you can. Be as kind as you can. Do what you can to help others along the way. Making the world a better place, one kid at a time.”
Perhaps that’s the biggest surprise about Brendan Kelly. The man who spent decades playing villains may actually be remembered for trying, quietly and consistently, to be one of the good guys.
Brendan’s Three Songs
“I’m No Angel” – Gregg Allman
Chosen because, as Brendan says, none of us are perfect.
“I’m not good, but I try to be good, that’s the best we can do.”
“More Than This” – Roxy Music
A song about recognising what really matters.
“When you find the right love, more than this there is nothing.”
“Fire and Rain” – James Taylor
A reminder that life rarely unfolds as planned.
“You do the best you can, make the best of what you have.”
The Wishing Well Three Questions
If you could change one thing in your life, what would it be?
“I’d make sure I always left people remembering me with kindness.”
What has been your greatest achievement?
“Having children, keeping kids off the street and out of the system.”
If you stood in front of the Wishing Well, what would you wish for?
“That people understand all blood runneth of one colour, all tears trickle with salt, and pity and need make all flesh kin.”
