By Joe O'Shea
Saturday Nov 15 2008

For a petite girl with a dancer's frame, Amy Huberman sure can make a racket. Clomping across the parquet floor of a new private members' club in the heart of Dublin, The Clinic actress is a little late and hustling up the stairs.

"Hi Joe! Oh, sorry I'm late -- I was out doing a shoot in this place called Lyons Demesne. It's an amazing place, beautiful... never even knew it was there ... owned by a guy called O'Reilly ... I think."

She flops into a big, comfy leather armchair, pauses for breath, sips her water and then we are off into a free-wheeling chat about acting, woolly cardigans, girly holidays and rugger boys in Dubarry deck shoes. She's a former Loreto girl who grew up in south Dublin, went to UCD and ended up going out with a square-jawed rugby hero.

This afternoon, her boyfriend Brian O'Driscoll leads Ireland out against the All Blacks at Croke Park. But Amy won't be watching from the stands. The 29-year-old actress is travelling in Australia with an old school friend, taking time out from her acting career to get a bit of winter sun.

It's not surprising that Amy doesn't feel the need to be a stereotypical rugby 'wag', cheering from the corporate box at the most glamorous international of the year. She has a few surprises up her sleeve.

Amy (29) was raised in the Catholic faith but has Jewish heritage through her father, Harold Huberman, a fashion designer from London's Jewish enclave of Golders Green. The young Harold had just moved to Dublin to work in fashion design when he met her mother, Sandra, a Wexford woman with an independent spirit who gave up teaching to become a model.

So here you have the apparently dyed-in-the-cashmere south Dublin girl who loves spending time with her father's extended family in Golders Green, and observes the Jewish Sabbath when she does so. She visited Auschwitz with her family and is only too aware of what horror might have visited the Hubermans if her grandfather had not left Poland as part of the eastern-European Jewish exodus before the First World War.

Yes, Daisy from The Clinic has her surprises -- such as her take on the way we see rugby players, or, as she puts it, "The whole Ross O'Carroll-Kelly thing".

Amy admits that, yes, she did share some of those "pre-conceived notions and reservations". And she was "a little bit surprised" when she first met Brian and his friends. Aha. We have come to The Brian Question.

It must be tough for Amy when she is doing interviews, talking about her new movie (the really rather good A Film With Me In It) and waiting for The Brian Question to come along. She must see the interviewer almost straining at the leash. 'Yes, you're young, talented and good looking, and we'd love to hear about your new role, but... can you tell us... what's Brian really like? What's it like being a golden couple? Invite us into your lovely home and tell us you've never been happier! C'mon, dish!'

It could be awkward but there is no obvious hesitation or guardedness when it comes to talking about her boyfriend and our hero -- apart from a reluctance to say 'we' very often. And you also get the sense that Amy isn't really that bothered about Brian's day job; she certainly never really went for rugger types before.

When she was in Loreto College in Foxrock, she tended to hang out "with the guys who went in for their school musicals" and not the sports types. "It was when I went to UCD that I started to notice the rugby thing a lot more, because I wasn't very sporty in school; I don't like team sports and I hate being chased! And I had my preconceived notions about sporty guys, my reservations. That's probably why I joined dramsoc in college, because I was thinking there has to be more than this whole sports scene."

Now going out with the hero of Leinster and Ireland, Amy appreciates the irony. However, it's clear that Brian and his friends helped to dispel any notions of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly after they met for the first time.

"Oh, that whole thing, it's a bit like when people assume all actors are a bit dim and shallow; it's just these stereotypes," says Amy, who admits to being "surprised" when she was first introduced to her current boyfriend, by the man himself and by his circle of friends.

"Brian is so unassuming, so intelligent, into lots of different things, loves his music, movies. I think he sometimes surprises people who don't really know him. And his friends and their girlfriends, it's not this whole rugger boys in Dubarry shoes and wags scene.

"The girls are smart, intelligent people, running their own businesses or with good careers -- it's nothing like the stereotype people have. Nobody goes to the matches in fake tan and sparkly dresses," she says.

Another surprise, almost as startling as the fact that here is a celebrity couple that most Irish people seem to be genuinely happy for. However, there may be trouble on the horizon, as Amy is fully prepared to give it all up for actor Josh Hartnett: "I like the scruffy, stubbly look; guys with a bit of cheek, a bit of boldness to them." Scruffy, eh? She spots my own quizzical look and offers a quick explanation about her appearance.

Not to be ungallant, but Amy looks very glam from the neck up -- and a bit of a student south of the neckline. Her hair is backcombed into a mini-Winehouse, her make-up is dramatic and the effect is a little bit at odds with the scruffy boots, well-worn skinny jeans and comfy cardi. It does not strike you as a deliberate look, but it is charming in a boho-chic sort of way. Amy looks a little bit like a student who was held hostage by the MAC counter in BTs for two hours.

"They did my hair and make-up for the photos and I changed afterwards -- I've got all my stuff in the bags," she explains, pointing to the jumble in the corner.

Now this is genuinely surprising. When your working life puts you in the vicinity of glamorous women, you soon learn that there are certain, unbreakable rules. Amy knew that there would be a photographer along today, even if it was not going to be a full-blown photo shoot. Therefore, according to the Glam Celebrity Girl's Handbook, at the very least she should have a hairdresser and a make-up artist in tow. There would have been at least 40 minutes of people running in and out of a makeshift dressing room and a frantic debate about who forgot the hair-straighteners

It's not really about being vain or precious, it's just something that Irish women who are in the public eye have to do. They learn very early on in the game that any mistakes will be pointed out and commented on with malicious glee. And fashion offences will be taken down and used against them at a later date in the court of bitchy-style features.

The scruffy look is partly an unintentional echo of her role in A Film With Me In It. Amy plays the (very) long-suffering girlfriend of a loser actor (Mark Doherty), and her role calls on her to look dowdy and downtrodden and do a lot of complaining.

"It was a role that was very different to what I'd done before and what I was known for. You want to work with people who are open to change and not going to box you off as the blonde who does that one kind of thing and nothing else," she says.

Amy goes dark in the movie and her hair colour remains a few shades darker than fans of The Clinic -- now well into its fifth season on RTE -- might recognise. "It's fun to be able to play around with your look a little bit, maybe surprise people who might have a certain image of you. And it lets you go under the radar a little bit."

Flying under the radar has certainly been a theme for Amy and her boyfriend (yes, him again).

A handsome international sports star and his glamorous actress girlfriend, young (both are 29), successful and golden. So why don't us mere mortals curl up with jealous rage at the very thought of them? How have they avoided the kind of media overkill, and barely disguised antipathy, that hits just about every other celebrity couple?

"I realise that we have been lucky so far in how people have reacted to us, because I've seen how hard it can be for others," she says. "I think it's because Brian and myself stay away as much as possible from that whole thing," she says of the celebrity circus. "I'm so sensitive and I would hope that it would never turn a different way, or that I would do anything that would justify getting a hard time, because I've seen some people get an absolutely awful time."

We talk about how, when Amy and Brian first started going out together, there was a sort of race among the gossip columnists and snappers to get the first big picture of them together. I tell her that a lot of newspaper editors were more than a little frustrated at the couple's 'refusal' to pose for the obligatory 'happy together' snap.

"I know! That did become a bit of a deal, but it wasn't as if we did that in a conscious way; not like we sat down and talked about it. For some people it may be a bit of a game, playing around with it, and that's fine if that's what you want to do. But it's such a small part of our lives, for Brian especially," she says.

A gradate of UCD and Dublin Institute of Technology, Amy began acting when she was in secondary school and made her debut in the RTE drama On Home Ground while she was still completing her MA. The drama about life around a GAA club in Co Kildare led to appearances in both series of Showbands alongside Kerry Katona, where she played young singer Bella. Other TV appearances include Dream Team 80s (ITV), Camera Cafe (RTé) and George Gently (BBC). However, she is best-known to Irish TV viewers as Daisy O'Callaghan in The Clinic. This latest season has seen Daisy grow up, from the happy-go-lucky girl who first popped up behind the counter to a young woman facing fresh challenges after the death of her cousin, Cathy.

"It's been a great role, Daisy and myself have kind of grown up together," says Amy, who will be seen playing Lucinda in a new Irish film, Satellites and Meteorite. At 29 and with her career on the up, Amy can be forgiven for not looking too far into the future.

When she first arrived into the just-about completed Sycamore Club on the edge of Temple Bar, Amy and myself got the guided tour from club manager Paul. When he showed us a room full of huge beanbags, Amy was through the door like a shot and flinging herself onto the nearest one.

Later, on the roof terrace, she vamped a bit of disco dancing, much to the amusement of the guys installing the bar. And when it's time for us to part, she's having a laugh with the cameraman who's keeping her on for some final snaps.

It's hard to be a cynic in her company. Energetic, engaging, outgoing and smart, Ms Huberman is a bit of a natural.

- Joe O'Shea

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