What do Colin Farrell, Kate Winslet, Ruth Wilson, and now Emma Stone have in common? Their mother! That is, their on-screen mother, Deirdre O’Connell—who, though not a mother herself, has made a remarkable career out of playing one. She’s been Winslet’s in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Wilson’s in The Affair, but her breakout came in 2019 with a haunting, Tony-winning performance in Broadway’s Dana H., a one-woman show in which she lip-synched to recordings of the playwright Lucas Hnath’s mother, a woman kidnapped by a psychiatric patient. She just picked up an Emmy nomination for her performance as Farrell’s mother in 2024’s The Penguin, and will next appear as Stone’s mom in Eddington—a new Western dark comedy, set during the coronavirus pandemic, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, and Austin Butler. Here, the matriarch herself shares her key components to the good life. —Carolina de Armas
Airline: I must admit, I like any with those sleeping pods. You feel like you’re in an odd little egg that has everything you need to sustain life. It’s hard to go back to real life once you’ve been in one.
Airport: I like a small, quiet one.
Alibi: I so admire people who say they don’t answer e-mails on certain days of the week. It’s like an alibi that you set up in advance. But I never have the balls to do it.
App: Art Set—it’s a painting app for computer illiterates.
Bag: A knapsack that weighs nothing and keeps everything organized. (It doesn’t actually exist.)
Bedtime: One A.M.
Bike: Any bike with a big, soft seat.
Birthday: I always ignore it, and that seems to go pretty well. Every year I think I’ll do something, and then I ignore it again. Eventually, I’ll just be, well, dead.
Boyfriend/girlfriend: Dreamy-looking, kind, tough, and loves me a lot.
Breakfast, weekday: Coffee and Wasa Crispbread crackers with butter and peanut butter.
Breakfast, weekend: Eggs Benedict.
Car: I never really loved a car. I think I learned to drive too late in life. They just feel like strange, dangerous metal boxes to me.
Child: I have a certain weakness for a kid with glasses. Also, with a voice that’s a little too deep. A little tough-guy voice on a kid kills me.
Cocktail: Modelo Negra in a wineglass, please.
Cocktail appetizer: Potato chips.
Couple: People who are crazy about each other and who seem exactly the same when they’re with each other as they do when they’re with you one-on-one.
Date: We’re outside with a view of the ocean. Some sort of fire is burning. And cocktails.
Diet: Painless, and strangely effective considering you get to eat whatever you want! It’s kind of a miracle!
Dinner, weekday: Salmon and Caesar salad.
Dinner, weekend: Pasta with some kind of delicious mushroom thing and lamb chops.
Disguise: I’d love to be able to be completely invisible.
Dress: It’s navy blue and it has white polka dots, and it fits like a million bucks but looks very effortless and comfy in a 1940s kind of way. I don’t have this dress. I’ve never had it. I’m always looking for it.
Drive: Driving in the desert in New Mexico. Pretty damn pleasurable.
Enemy: Insomnia.
Escape: Drawing on my iPad with some really bad, I mean really bad, reality TV playing on my computer.
Family: I love my real blood family. But I also love so many of the work families I’ve made, so many of the friendship families I’ve made, so many of the unconventional far-flung chosen families I’ve gotten to be part of. And if you’re lucky enough that some of your blood family is in your chosen family, too, how great is that?
First lady/first man: My Michelle Obama paper-doll magnets are still on my refrigerator.
Fit: What clothes do when you like them! They seem to be soft and easy to wear, but you strangely look fabulous in them. It defies science.
Flaw: The flaw that makes a thing breathe. It makes a thing shimmer. I’m a perfectionist, and I always have to stop working on something before I’ve destroyed the flaw … the flaw is the sweetest part.
Friend: Being a good and trusted and lively friend. It’s just as important as being a good lover. I wish I were a better friend.
Good-bye: I am a fan of the Irish good-bye. I don’t think people mind. I don’t think people notice. I hope I’m right about that! Argh!
Hideaway: I always like to find a nice little sleeping nest on any set or theater.
Indulgence: Chocolate.
Insult: “Fuck you.”
Kiss-off: “Fuck you.”
Last meal: Lamb chops, mashed potatoes, spinach pie, chocolate-ice-cream sundae, and red wine.
Movie: A Woman Under the Influence, directed by John Cassavetes.
Name: Something unpronounceable and Irish …
Nonfiction book: H Is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald.
Novel: The Mighty Red, by Louise Erdrich.
Pair of pants: Soft, wide jeans.
Pair of shoes: Really comfy black Hoka sneakers—or, better yet, no shoes at all.
Pen or pencil: Apple Pencil.
Piece of advice: “Forgive yourself.”
Podcast: Talk Art, with actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament.
President: Oh geeeeeez … God help us.
Restaurant: Pico de Gallo in Stuyvesant, New York. It’s right on the Hudson River, and it’s sweet and casual and you can watch the train go by at 80 miles per hour.
Ride: On the train by the Hudson.
Singer: Betty Carter.
STORM: Thunderstorm.
Street: I’ve lived on East Sixth Street in New York City for 45 years, and I always think it would be kind of cool to make a deal with the devil where I could come back to see what it was like every hundred years or so after I’m dead. Just that one spot. You would know so much just from seeing what happened to that one spot.
Television series: The Sopranos, The Wire, Adolescence, I May Destroy You, The Penguin … not necessarily in that order.
Theme song TO your life: “Workin’ Woman Blues,” by Valerie June.
Toast: Something cool and unpronounceable in Russian.
Vacation: It’s in the middle of winter in February, and you go somewhere warm where there’s a beach. And you just can’t believe it!
Victim: Mr. Bill.
Wake-up time: Late. Very late.
Weekend bag: Shockingly light but everything seems to be in it! How could that be?
Work of art: Annunciation, by Simone Martini, at the Uffizi in Florence.
Deirdre’s Essentials
